Alibaba Qwen3.5

Qwen3.5-27B hardware requirements

Fits on one Instinct MI350X OAM at BF16. For 1,000 tokens/s at 32k context you need 2 x H100 SXM5 80GB at $3.58/hr or 4 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition at $2.00/hr.

Parameters
27.8B
Active per token
All
dense model
KV cache per token
64 KB
16-bit cache
Native precision
BF16

Bare minimum

Fewest GPUs
1 x Instinct MI350X OAM
BF16, 4,096 tokens, one stream
Tokens/s
107
Per hour
$6.16
Per million tokens
$15.97
Memory used
20%
Rent on DigitalOcean
Cheapest per hour
1 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition
BF16, 4,096 tokens, one stream, live price
Tokens/s
24.0
Per hour
$0.50
Per million tokens
$5.79
Memory used
61%
Rent on RunPod
Cheapest per million tokens
2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition
BF16, 32,768 tokens, 32 streams
Tokens/s
633
Per hour
$1.00
Per million tokens
$0.44
Memory used
70%
Rent on RunPod

Configurations

Every datacenter GPU in the catalog, sized for these settings. Change precision, context and concurrency and the whole page follows. Each point is one replica: the smallest tensor-parallel group of that GPU that holds the model.

Vendor

1 x GB300 NVL72 GPU 288GB: 1.5k tokens/s per replica at $8.62/hr.1 x GB200 NVL72 GPU 186GB: 1.5k tokens/s per replica at $10.50/hr.1 x Instinct MI350X OAM: 1.5k tokens/s per replica at $6.16/hr.1 x B300 SXM 262GB: 1.5k tokens/s per replica at $7.40/hr.1 x B200 SXM 180GB: 1.4k tokens/s per replica at $4.09/hr.1 x Instinct MI325X OAM: 1.1k tokens/s per replica at $3.80/hr.1 x Instinct MI300X 192GB: 985 tokens/s per replica at $2.39/hr.1 x H200 SXM 141GB: 892 tokens/s per replica at $2.99/hr.2 x H100 SXM5 80GB: 1.2k tokens/s per replica at $3.58/hr.1 x H200 NVL 141GB: 892 tokens/s per replica at $3.79/hr.2 x H100 NVL 94GB: 1.4k tokens/s per replica at $6.38/hr.2 x H100 PCIe 80GB: 706 tokens/s per replica at $5.00/hr.2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition: 633 tokens/s per replica at $3.60/hr.2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition: 564 tokens/s per replica at $1.18/hr.2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition: 633 tokens/s per replica at $1.00/hr.8 x GeForce RTX 5090 32GB: 2.3k tokens/s per replica at $7.92/hr.4 x RTX 6000 Ada 48GB: 642 tokens/s per replica at $3.36/hr.4 x L40S 48GB: 578 tokens/s per replica at $3.48/hr.2 x A100 PCIe 80GB: 683 tokens/s per replica at $2.70/hr.2 x A100 SXM4 80GB: 720 tokens/s per replica at $2.80/hr.4 x A100 SXM4 40GB: 1.0k tokens/s per replica at $5.16/hr.8 x RTX 5000 Ada 32GB: 728 tokens/s per replica at $6.64/hr.4 x RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell 48GB: 899 tokens/s per replica at $3.84/hr.8 x RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell 32GB: 1.1k tokens/s per replica at $5.76/hr.4 x L40 48GB: 578 tokens/s per replica at $3.28/hr.8 x GeForce RTX 4090 24GB: 1.3k tokens/s per replica at $4.80/hr.8 x A30 24GB: 1.2k tokens/s per replica at $5.86/hr.4 x RTX A6000 48GB: 514 tokens/s per replica at $2.00/hr.4 x A40 48GB: 466 tokens/s per replica at $1.96/hr.8 x RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell 24GB: 849 tokens/s per replica at $4.56/hr.8 x V100S PCIe 32GB: 1.4k tokens/s per replica at $7.04/hr.8 x A10 24GB: 758 tokens/s per replica at $10.32/hr.8 x L4 24GB: 379 tokens/s per replica at $3.92/hr.8 x GeForce RTX 3090 24GB: 1.2k tokens/s per replica at $4.00/hr.8 x GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24GB: 1.3k tokens/s per replica at $3.68/hr.8 x RTX A5000 24GB: 971 tokens/s per replica at $2.16/hr.

Priced configurations only; 37 more fit without a live price and appear in the table. Marker size grows with the tensor-parallel width. Roofline estimates.

GPUTPTokens/s
1 ~4.3k Specs
1 4.1k Specs
1 1.5k Specs
1 1.5k Rent
1 1.5k Rent
1 1.5k Rent
1 1.5k Rent
1 1.4k Rent
1 1.5k Specs
1 1.1k Rent
1 985 Rent
4 1.1k Specs
1 892 Rent
2 1.2k Rent
2 1.2k Specs
1 ~892 Rent
2 ~1.4k Rent
2 706 Rent
2 706 Specs
2 633 Rent
2 ~564 Rent
2 633 Rent
4 822 Specs
8 2.3k Rent
2 1.2k Specs
4 ~642 Rent
2 1.2k Specs
4 578 Rent
2 683 Specs
2 683 Rent
2 720 Rent
4 1.0k Specs
4 1.0k Rent
8 ~1.7k Specs
4 ~642 Specs
8 ~728 Rent
4 ~899 Rent
2 ~475 Specs
8 ~1.1k Rent
8 809 Specs
8 1.6k Specs
8 ~769 Specs
4 578 Rent
4 1.1k Specs
8 1.3k Rent
8 1.2k Rent
8 ~546 Specs
4 514 Rent
4 466 Rent
1 744 Specs
2 1.4k Specs
8 ~849 Rent
8 1.5k Specs
8 ~971 Specs
8 1.4k Rent
8 758 Rent
4 578 Specs
4 578 Specs
8 1.2k Specs
8 379 Rent
4 578 Specs
8 ~769 Specs
8 ~576 Specs
8 379 Specs
8 ~546 Specs
4 578 Specs
8 728 Specs
8 1.2k Rent
8 758 Specs
8 1.3k Rent
8 647 Specs
8 971 Rent
8 566 Specs

AMD vs NVIDIA

At BF16 the NVIDIA pick is 2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition at about 633 tokens/s for $1.00/hr; the AMD pick is 1 x Instinct MI300X 192GB at about 985 tokens/s for $2.39/hr. Per rental dollar NVIDIA delivers 1.54x the tokens of AMD here.

NVIDIA: 633 tokens/s per dollar, 1.1k tokens/s per kW (2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition).AMD: 412 tokens/s per dollar, 1.3k tokens/s per kW (1 x Instinct MI300X 192GB).Intel: no live price, 964 tokens/s per kW (2 x Data Center GPU Max 1550 128GB).Other: no live price, 487 tokens/s per kW (4 x BR100).

NVIDIA 49 parts fit
Best value: 2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition, 633 tok/s for $1.00/hr
Fewest GPUs: 1 x Rubin SXM, 4.1k tok/s
AMD 17 parts fit
Best value: 1 x Instinct MI300X 192GB, 985 tok/s for $2.39/hr
Fewest GPUs: 1 x Instinct MI455X OAM, 4.3k tok/s
Intel 5 parts fit
Fewest GPUs: 2 x Data Center GPU Max 1550 128GB, 1.2k tok/s
Other 2 parts fit
Fewest GPUs: 4 x BR100, 1.1k tok/s

Fleet what-if

Compare whole fleets at these settings: a thousand of one part against a hundred of another. Each fleet splits into replicas of its tensor-parallel width; GPUs left over sit idle.

A
B
FleetReplicasTokens/s
A 1,000 x H200 SXM 141GB 1,000 x TP1 892k
B 100 x GB200 NVL72 GPU 186GB 100 x TP1 149k

1,000 x H200 SXM 141GB: 892k tokens/s, $2,990/hr, 700 kW.100 x GB200 NVL72 GPU 186GB: 149k tokens/s, $1,050/hr, no power figure.

H200 SXM 141GB: 892k tokens/s at 1000 GPUs.GB200 NVL72 GPU 186GB: 1.49M tokens/s at 1000 GPUs.

Size Qwen3.5-27B for a tokens per second target

The calculator starts from your traffic instead of a fleet: set a target rate and read the replica count for every GPU.

Frequently asked questions

How much GPU memory does Qwen3.5-27B need?

The weights take 55.6 GB at the native BF16 precision (55.6 GB at BF16, 27.8 GB at FP8, 15.6 GB at INT4). Each concurrent stream adds 64 KB of KV cache per token: 0.3 GB at 4,096 tokens and 2.1 GB at 32,768 tokens.

What is the bare minimum to run Qwen3.5-27B?

1 x Instinct MI350X OAM at BF16 with 4,096 tokens of context and one stream. The cheapest live rental for that footprint is 1 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition at $0.50 per hour.

How many H100s do you need to run Qwen3.5-27B?

one H100 at BF16 for 4,096 tokens of context and one stream. For 32,768 tokens and 32 concurrent streams the tensor-parallel group is 2 H100s, and 1,000 tokens per second takes 2 H100s across 1 replicas.

How much does Qwen3.5-27B cost per million tokens on an H100?

About $0.84 per million output tokens at BF16, 32,768 tokens of context and 32 streams, using the cheapest live on-demand price of $1.79 per GPU-hour. The cheapest part per token is 2 x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition at $0.44.

What precision does Qwen3.5-27B ship in?

The published checkpoint is BF16. FP8 and INT4 figures describe post-training quantisations that halve and quarter the footprint at a small accuracy cost.

All figures are roofline estimates from the model's config.json and each GPU's published memory, bandwidth and tensor-core peak, with fixed efficiency factors. Prices are the cheapest live on-demand listing per GPU when the site has one. They are a planning floor; a tuned serving stack can do better. Only the 16 full-attention layers keep a per-token cache. The 48 linear-attention layers hold a fixed 151 MB state per sequence (48 value heads x 128 x 128 in FP32 per layer).