MiniMax-M2.7-TurboQuant-MLX-2bit

MLX 2-bit quantized variant of MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7 with TurboQuant KV-cache compression, optimized for Apple Silicon.

Overview

MiniMax-M2.7 is a massive 256-expert Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 8 experts active per token, totaling approximately 456 billion parameters. This variant combines 2-bit MLX weight quantization with TurboQuant KV-cache quantization for deployment on Apple Silicon hardware.

TurboQuant uses asymmetric per-channel quantization on the KV cache. At 2-bit, this is the most aggressively compressed variant -- it enables running on 128 GB Apple Silicon but comes with meaningful quality degradation. Best suited for experimentation, prototyping, and latency-sensitive applications where approximate outputs are acceptable.

Property	Value
Architecture	MoE (256 experts, 8 active/token)
Total Parameters	~456B
Layers	62
Hidden Size	3072
Attention Heads	48
Weight Quantization	2-bit (MLX)
KV-Cache Quantization	TurboQuant
Estimated Size	~110 GB
Base Model	MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7

Quickstart

pip install mlx-lm

from mlx_lm import load, generate

model, tokenizer = load("majentik/MiniMax-M2.7-TurboQuant-MLX-2bit")

prompt = "What is a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment?"
messages = [{"role": "user", "content": prompt}]
text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, add_generation_prompt=True, tokenize=False)

response = generate(
    model,
    tokenizer,
    prompt=text,
    max_tokens=512,
)
print(response)

TurboQuant vs RotorQuant

Feature	TurboQuant	RotorQuant
Technique	Asymmetric per-channel KV quantization	Rotation-based KV quantization (Hadamard transform)
Throughput	Higher throughput, lower latency	Slightly lower throughput
Quality	Good quality preservation	Better quality preservation at low bit-widths
Best For	High-throughput serving, long contexts	Quality-sensitive tasks, research

At 2-bit quantization, quality loss is significant for both methods. The RotorQuant variant will generally produce better outputs at this bit-width due to its rotation-based outlier smoothing.

Memory Estimates (Apple Silicon)

Variant	Estimated Size	Minimum Unified Memory
MLX 8-bit	~456 GB	512 GB (Mac Studio M2/M3/M4 Ultra)
MLX 5-bit	~280 GB	384 GB
MLX 4-bit	~225 GB	256 GB
MLX 3-bit	~170 GB	192 GB
MLX 2-bit	~110 GB	128 GB

Note: 2-bit is the most accessible variant, fitting on Apple Silicon with 128 GB+ unified memory (e.g., M2/M3/M4 Max or Ultra). Expect noticeable quality degradation compared to higher bit-widths.

See Also

• MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7 -- Base model
• majentik/MiniMax-M2.7-TurboQuant -- KV-cache only (transformers)
• majentik/MiniMax-M2.7-RotorQuant-MLX-2bit -- RotorQuant MLX 2-bit
• majentik/MiniMax-M2.7-TurboQuant-MLX-3bit -- MLX 3-bit
• majentik/MiniMax-M2.7-TurboQuant-MLX-4bit -- MLX 4-bit

Quant trade-off (MLX lane)

Bits	Approx size	Use case	Recommendation
2-bit	~119 GB	Aggressive quantization	Very low-RAM Macs
3-bit	~164 GB	Lossy but small	Low-RAM Macs
4-bit	~192 GB	Balanced default	Recommended for most Macs
5-bit	~228 GB	Higher fidelity	Quality-sensitive
6-bit	~274 GB	Approaching FP16 quality	High-fidelity
8-bit	~347 GB	Near-lossless reference	Fidelity-critical work

(Current variant — 2bit — is bolded.)

Variants in this family

(Showing 12 sibling variants under majentik/minimax-m2.7-*. The current variant — TurboQuant-MLX-2bit — is bolded.)

Variant	Runtime	Approx size	Use case
RotorQuant	runtime modifier	n/a	KV-cache root (weight-agnostic)
RotorQuant-MLX-2bit	mlx-lm	~885 MB	Apple Silicon, smallest
RotorQuant-MLX-3bit	mlx-lm	~1.2 GB	Apple Silicon, small
RotorQuant-MLX-4bit	mlx-lm	~1.7 GB	Apple Silicon balanced
RotorQuant-MLX-5bit	mlx-lm	~2.1 GB	Apple Silicon, higher fidelity
RotorQuant-MLX-8bit	mlx-lm	~3.2 GB	Apple Silicon reference
TurboQuant	runtime modifier	n/a	KV-cache root (weight-agnostic)
TurboQuant-MLX-2bit	mlx-lm	~885 MB	Apple Silicon, smallest
TurboQuant-MLX-3bit	mlx-lm	~1.2 GB	Apple Silicon, small
TurboQuant-MLX-4bit	mlx-lm	~1.7 GB	Apple Silicon balanced
TurboQuant-MLX-5bit	mlx-lm	~2.1 GB	Apple Silicon, higher fidelity
TurboQuant-MLX-8bit	mlx-lm	~3.2 GB	Apple Silicon reference