Gemma vs. OpenLLaMA

Overview

Gemma is Google's family of efficient open models for local, edge, and self-hosted deployment. Gemma 4 is the current generation, spanning mobile-scale through workstation-scale models.

Google introduced Gemma in February 2024 as a family of lightweight open models built from the same research used for Gemini. Gemma 2 improved efficiency and model quality, while Gemma 3 added multimodal input and longer context. Gemma 4, released in April 2026 under Apache 2.0, adds advanced reasoning, agentic tool use, code generation, image and video understanding, and models ranging from edge-focused E2B and E4B variants to 12B, 26B mixture-of-experts, and 31B dense checkpoints.

Initial release: 2024-02-21

Current generation: Gemma 4

Reference

https://ai.google.dev/gemma

Further Reading

• https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs
• https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/gemma-4/

Overview

OpenLLaMA is an effort from OpenLM Research to offer a non-gated version of LLaMa that can be used both for research and commercial applications. As of June 2023, the model is still training, with 3B, 7B, and 13B parameter models available.

Initial release: 2023-04-28

Reference

https://github.com/openlm-research/open_llama

Further Reading

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35798888