Hardware overview
hal0 runs on four classes of home hardware in v1. The one-line installer detects which class you’re on and picks the right backend automatically — this page is for figuring out where you land before you commit.
The tiers
Section titled “The tiers”| Tier | Hardware | Status | Path |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-class | AMD Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, Radeon 8060S, XDNA NPU, 64–128 GB unified) | Reference platform | Vulkan llama.cpp on the iGPU + FLM-on-NPU (NPU pending) |
| Supported | AMD discrete (RX 7900 XT/XTX, Radeon Pro) | Vulkan today, ROCm queued | Vulkan llama.cpp; ROCm toolbox pending |
| Supported | NVIDIA discrete (RTX 3080 / 4080 / 4090 / 5090) | Vulkan today, CUDA queued | Vulkan llama.cpp; CUDA toolbox pending |
| Fallback | CPU-only x86_64 (no GPU) | CI smoke target | Vulkan-CPU (lavapipe) |
Linux + systemd is required for all tiers.
How to pick
Section titled “How to pick”- You’re shopping for a home AI box. Get a 128 GB Strix Halo machine. That’s the whole premise of v1 — unified memory means you run the big models that discrete cards can’t, in a single quiet SFF chassis.
- You already have a high-end NVIDIA card. Use it. The NVIDIA page covers what works today (Vulkan) and what’s queued (CUDA toolbox). A 4090 / 5090 on chat tok/s outperforms an iGPU on small models; you trade headroom for throughput.
- You already have an AMD discrete card. Same story. AMD discrete — Vulkan today, ROCm toolbox queued.
- You have a CPU-only box and want to try hal0. CPU-only walks through the fallback path. Smoke-test it; don’t expect to chat through it all day.
Where the perf numbers come from
Section titled “Where the perf numbers come from”Every measured number on this site comes from the Strix Halo reference deployment (Ryzen AI Max+ 395 + Vulkan llama.cpp). See the Strix Halo page for the verbatim table. Numbers from other hardware tiers will be added as they’re measured at publish quality.