Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B vs Lucie 7B

The two models at a glance

About Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B

IBM's edge-class hybrid MoE with 7B total and only 1B active parameters — Apache 2.0 licensed and built for embedded and low-cost serving. Strengths: Extremely low compute cost per token via 1B active params, Apache 2.0 license with no commercial strings attached, 128k context handled efficiently thanks to hybrid Mamba-2, Tiny memory footprint suits edge and serverless deploys.

About Lucie 7B

A French-sovereign 7B model from OpenLLM-France, backed by CNRS and LINAGORA, with a fully transparent and auditable training corpus. Strengths: Full European data sovereignty story, Publicly available training corpus, Strong formal French output, Backed by CNRS and LINAGORA.

How they compare

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B comes from IBM and Lucie 7B from OpenLLM-France, they belong to the Granite and Lucie families respectively. This comparison is built entirely from structured specs — parameter count, VRAM by quantization, context window, license, and published benchmark scores — so the verdict below reflects measurable differences rather than marketing claims.

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Lucie 7B share the same 7B parameter class. At Q4, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B fits in about 4 GB of VRAM versus 5 GB for the other — a 1 GB difference that matters on consumer GPUs.

The two models target different sweet spots: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is tuned for chat, general, moe, small, while Lucie 7B leans toward chat, fr. Match the model to your dominant workload rather than to raw size.

On a typical mid-range GPU, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B pushes roughly 180 tokens/sec versus 35, so it is the more responsive choice for interactive or high-volume use. For long-context work, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B offers the bigger window (125k vs 4k tokens).

Memory, quantization & throughput

Across quantization levels, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B requires Q4 ≈ 4 GB, Q5 ≈ 5 GB, Q8 ≈ 7 GB, FP16 ≈ 14 GB, while Lucie 7B requires Q4 ≈ 5 GB, Q5 ≈ 6 GB, Q8 ≈ 9 GB, FP16 ≈ 16 GB. In practice Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B fits an 8 GB card at Q4, so plan your GPU around the Q4 or Q5 figure unless you specifically need the higher fidelity of Q8 or FP16.

Without a GPU, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B needs roughly 8 GB of system RAM to run on CPU and Lucie 7B about 8 GB — workable for offline use but far slower than GPU inference. On a mid-range GPU you can expect on the order of 180 tokens/sec from Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and 35 from Lucie 7B, scaling up to 350 and 90 tokens/sec on high-end hardware.

Which fits your GPU

Here is the highest-quality quantization of each model that fits common GPU memory budgets, so you can match Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B or Lucie 7B to the card you actually own:

• On a 8 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at Q8 (7 GB); Lucie 7B runs at Q5 (6 GB).
• On a 12 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at Q8 (7 GB); Lucie 7B runs at Q8 (9 GB).
• On a 16 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at FP16 (14 GB); Lucie 7B runs at FP16 (16 GB).
• On a 24 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at FP16 (14 GB); Lucie 7B runs at FP16 (16 GB).

Benchmark scores

Reported benchmarks for Lucie 7B: MMLU (fr) 54.2, FrenchBench 68.

Bottom line: which should you pick?

• Pick Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B for long-context work (up to 125k tokens).
• Pick Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B if your workload is general, moe, small.
• Pick Lucie 7B if your workload is fr.

Which hardware should you buy to run Lucie 7B?

To run Lucie 7B locally at Q4, you need ~5 GB of VRAM. The best value for this today is a RTX 5060 Ti 16GB (ASUS Dual OC) (16 GB VRAM, best $/GB).

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Lucie 7B?

The headline differences: both are 7B models; their context windows differ (125k vs 4k tokens). Below we break down VRAM by quantization, benchmark scores, and a use-case verdict so you can pick the right one.

Can Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Lucie 7B run on a 24 GB GPU?

At a Q4 quantization, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B needs about 4 GB of VRAM and fits comfortably on a 24 GB GPU; Lucie 7B needs about 5 GB and fits comfortably on a 24 GB GPU. Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is the lighter option for tight VRAM budgets.

What licenses do Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Lucie 7B use?

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is licensed under Apache 2.0 and Lucie 7B under Apache 2.0.

Which has the longer context window, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B or Lucie 7B?

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B has the larger context window (125k vs 4k tokens), so it handles longer documents and codebases in a single prompt.