This article explores Falcon 40B, a powerful open-source large language model (LLM) developed by the Technology Innovation Institute (TII). Before diving in, a basic understanding of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) is recommended. Consider our AI Fundamentals skill track for a comprehensive introduction to key concepts like ChatGPT, LLMs, and generative AI.

Understanding Falcon 40B

Falcon 40B belongs to TII's Falcon family of LLMs, alongside Falcon 7B and Falcon 180B. As a causal decoder-only model, it excels at various natural language generation tasks. Its multilingual capabilities include English, German, Spanish, and French, with partial support for several other languages.

Model Architecture and Training

Falcon 40B's architecture, a modified version of GPT-3, utilizes rotary positional embeddings and enhanced attention mechanisms (multi-query attention and FlashAttention). The decoder block employs parallel attention and MLP structures with a two-layer normalization scheme for efficiency. Training involved 1 trillion tokens from RefinedWeb, a high-quality, deduplicated internet corpus, and utilized 384 A100 40GB GPUs on AWS SageMaker.

Image from Falcon blog

Key Features and Advantages

Falcon 40B's multi-query attention mechanism improves inference scalability without significantly impacting pretraining. Instruct versions (Falcon-7B-Instruct and Falcon-40B-Instruct) are also available, fine-tuned for improved performance on assistant-style tasks. Its Apache 2.0 license allows for commercial use without restrictions. Benchmarking on the OpenLLM Leaderboard shows Falcon 40B outperforming other open-source models like LLaMA, StableLM, RedPajama, and MPT.

Image from Open LLM Leaderboard

Getting Started: Inference and Fine-tuning

Running Falcon 40B requires significant GPU resources. While 4-bit quantization allows for execution on 40GB A100 GPUs, the smaller Falcon 7B is more suitable for consumer-grade hardware, including Google Colab. The provided code examples demonstrate inference using 4-bit quantization for Falcon 7B on Colab. Fine-tuning with QLoRA and the SFT Trainer is also discussed, leveraging the TRL library for efficient adaptation to new datasets. The example uses the Guanaco dataset.

Falcon-180B: A Giant Leap

Falcon-180B, trained on 3.5 trillion tokens, surpasses even Falcon 40B in performance. However, its 180 billion parameters necessitate substantial computational resources (approximately 8xA100 80GB GPUs) for inference. The release of Falcon-180B-Chat, fine-tuned for conversational tasks, offers a more accessible alternative.

Image from Falcon-180B Demo

Conclusion

Falcon 40B offers a compelling open-source LLM option, balancing performance and accessibility. While the full model demands significant resources, its smaller variants and fine-tuning capabilities make it a valuable tool for researchers and developers. For those interested in building their own LLMs, the Machine Learning Scientist with Python career track is a worthwhile consideration.

Official Resources:

• Official Hugging Face Page: tiiuae (Technology Innovation Institute)
• Blog: The Falcon has landed in the Hugging Face ecosystem
• Leaderboard: Open LLM Leaderboard
• Model Card: tiiuae/falcon-40b · Hugging Face
• Dataset: tiiuae/falcon-refinedweb

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