BitNet B1.58 Makes Local LLMs Practical on CPUs by Changing the Math, Not Just Shrinking the Model
BitNet B1.58 matters because it is not simply a lighter large language model. Its main change is the 1.58-bit ternary weight scheme, which restricts weights to -1, 0, and +1 and cuts both memory use and inference cost enough to make local CPU deployment realistic on ordinary machines. What changed materially with BitNet B1.58 In…