Intel Optane Persistent Memory

A Reddit hobbyist ran the 2.8-trillion-parameter Moonshot Kimi K3 model in a GPU-free home lab using discontinued Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 series and llama.cpp. With 1-bit quantization, disabling DAX so hot data benefits from DRAM caching lifted throughput from 0.85 to 1.5 tokens per second, while a 3-bit test reached only 0.75 tokens/s, taking about 18.5 hours for 50,000 tokens. The experiment shows trillion-scale models can run entirely from a memory hierarchy instead of GPU VRAM, though at far-from-practical speeds.