What is the point of MoE models, beyond being faster?

Reddit r/LocalLLaMA News

Summary

A discussion about the advantages of Mixture of Experts (MoE) models over dense models beyond speed, considering RAM constraints and scaling limits.

Hi. Besides the fact that an xByA MoE models runs as fast as a yA models but produces better results, what are other benefits of pursuing an MoE architecture and not a dense one with e.g. x/2 (or x/3) parameters? Given that we need enough RAM for xB parameter anyway, aren't MoEs at a disadvantage when RAM is scarce, like the current situation? And thinking of limit cases, is there a limit on x/y, so that it doesn't make sense e.g. to train a 100B1A MoE model? Thanks.
Original Article

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