freedom-intelligence/docs/hardware-envelope.md

# Hardware envelope — run vs reserve

**Status:** updated 2026-07-24 (1 TB NAS strategic reserve)  
**Used by:** inventory `hardware_class`, axis B/C, collection tiers R/S

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## Purpose

Separate two questions that used to be conflated:

1. **What can we run or fine-tune now?** → *run envelope*  
2. **What should we store on the NAS just in case?** → *reserve envelope* (1 TB)

Collecting a model **does not** require it to fit the run envelope.
See `docs/decisions/2026-07-24-nas-strategic-reserve.md`.

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## Run envelope (inference / training *today*)

| Tier | Assumed capacity | Typical runnable class |
| ---- | ---------------- | ---------------------- |
| **T0 — CPU / edge** | 16–64 GB system RAM, no GPU | ≤3B Q4; embeddings ≤0.5B |
| **T1 — consumer GPU** | 8–12 GB VRAM | 7–8B Q4/Q5; 3B fp16 |
| **T2 — enthusiast GPU** | 16–24 GB VRAM | 14B Q4; 8B fp16; light 32B Q4 |
| **T3 — lab multi-GPU** | 2×24 GB+ or 48 GB+ | 32B fp16 / 70B Q4; small MoE |
| **T4 — beyond current lab** | multi-node / datacenter class | Full large MoE / 70B+ fp16 dense |

**Runnable spine (tier R)** targets **T0–T2** (stretch T3 when hardware exists).

**Strategic reserve (tier S)** may be **T3–T4 or above** for *execution* — still
valid for NAS collection.

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## Reserve envelope (NAS)

| Parameter | Value |
| --------- | ----- |
| Facility | VAULT HD `D:\vault\coulomb\freedom-intelligence\` (soft quota 850 GiB) |
| Soft quota | 850 GiB |
| Hard stop | 920 GiB |
| Policy | `docs/backup-storage-policy.md` |

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## Lab hosts (fill in)

| Host | Role | GPU | VRAM | RAM | Notes |
| ---- | ---- | --- | ---- | --- | ----- |
| TBD | primary local inference | TBD | TBD | TBD | Run envelope |
| TBD | training experiments | TBD | TBD | TBD | Run envelope |
| **VAULT HD (D:)** | weight store | n/a | n/a | n/a | **Reserve envelope** — soft 850 GiB |
| railiance01 | cluster | n/a | n/a | n/a | Do not store weight trees on hot disks |

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## Inference runtime defaults (when runnable)

| Runtime | When |
| ------- | ---- |
| llama.cpp / GGUF | Desktop & edge |
| vLLM | Server multi-request |
| MLX | Apple silicon if present |
| Ollama | Quick operator UX only |

Strategic giants may remain **cold storage only** until hardware upgrades.

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## Training defaults (when runnable)

| Method | Envelope |
| ------ | -------- |
| QLoRA 7–8B | T1–T2 |
| QLoRA 14B | T2 |
| Full FT 7B | T2–T3 |
| 70B+ / large MoE FT | Future facility — weights may already sit on NAS |

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## Pin log

| Date | Change |
| ---- | ------ |
| 2026-07-24 | Draft tiers |
| 2026-07-24 | Split run vs reserve; NAS 1 TB; S tier may exceed run envelope |