ITHome: Reddit user runs Moonshot’s Kimi K3 on Intel Optane persistent memory without a GPU

According to ITHome, Reddit user u/IndividualSurvival posted a home-lab experiment on November 2 showing Moonshot AI’s 2.8 trillion-parameter Kimi K3 running without a GPU on discontinued Intel Optane persistent memory. The setup used a 40-core 3rd-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor, Optane Persistent Memory 200 series, App Direct mode, and llama.cpp for inference. Performance remained slow: with 1-bit quantization and compressed model data, generation started at about 0.85 tokens per second, rising to 1.50 tokens per second with DAX disabled. A separate 3-bit test reached only 0.75 tokens per second.