IBM is further expanding its portfolio of AI models with the introduction of Granite 3.0, a set of open-source LLMs. In addition, the company is expanding its AI portfolio with a new watsonx assistant for coding and a new version of its AI platform IBM Consulting Advantage.
IBM is greatly expanding its AI portfolio with new LLMs, an enhanced code assistant and AI platform enhancements. Underpinning this is the introduction of Granite 3.0 LLMs.
The LLMs will be available in three variants: the basic models, models with additional rules and security and so-called Mixture -of-Experts (MoE). The general base models of the Granite 3.0 LLMs are Granite 3.0 8B Instruct, Granite 3.0 2B Instruct, Granite 3.0 8B Base and Granite 3.0 2B Base.
The LLMs with additional security features are Granite Guardian 3.0 8B, and Granite Guardian 3.0 2B. The specific MoE LLMs are Granite 3.0 3B-A800M Instruct, Granite 3.0 1B-A400M Instruct, Granite 3.0 3B-A800M Base and Granite 3.0 1B-A400M Base.
Unlike many competitor LLMs, all IBM Granite 3.0 models are open source. This, according to IBM, should give these models better performance, flexibility and autonomy for (large) business use.
Under the hood
The Granite 3.0 8B and 2B LLMs now presented are designed as “workhorse” models for business AI use, for example, by providing strong RAG, classification, summary, entity extraction functionality and tooling usage. The LLMs can be easily fine-tuned with (proprietary) business data and integrated into different business environments or workflows.
The IBM LLMs have been trained under the hood, using Nvidia H100 GPUs, on more than 12 billion data points from 12 different languages and 116 different programming languages with a new two-stage training method. By the end of this year, Granite 3.0 8B and -2B LLMs should support 128,000-character context window and multimodal document comprehension capabilities.
Other introductions
In addition to the Granite 3.0 LLMs, building on this, IBM has also introduced a new version of the watsonx Code Assistant. This AI assistant for coding is now based on the Granite LLMs and offers help with coding in programming languages such as C, C++. Go. Java and Python. It also helps modernize enterprise Java applications. Furthermore, the Granite LLMs’ coding capabilities are now accessible through the VSC extension IBM Granite Code.
IBM has also given several updates to its AI-delivery platform IBM Consulting Advantage with the introduction of the new LLMs. The Granite 3.0 LLMs now become the standard LLMs offered within this platform.
Two more specific (consulting) services are additionally presented within the IBM Consulting Advantage AI platform; IBM Consulting Advantage for Cloud Transformation and Management and IBM Consulting Advantage for Business Operations.
These services include domain-specific AI agents, applications and methods based on best practices. With these, IBM consultants can help customers accelerate the transition to the cloud, deploy AI with tasks such as code modernization, quality engineering and operations in the areas of human resources, finance and procurement.
Availability of IBM Granite 3.0 LLMs
The open-source IBM Granite 3.0 LLMs are now available on HuggingFace. The specific Granite 3.0 Instruct models for commercial use are now available through the IBM watsonx platform. Select models will also soon be available through NVIDIA NIM microservices and Google Cloud Vertex AI Model Garden integrations with HuggingFace.
Also read: IBM marries AI platform with as much data as possible: what’s Watsonx?