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Qwen3.5-9B Nears Win in Tough Math Game

Qwen3.5-9B Nears Win in Tough Math Game
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๐Ÿฆ™Read original on Reddit r/LocalLLaMA
#reasoning-benchmark#small-llms#math-gameqwen3.5-9bqwen3.5-9bcogito-v1gpt-oss

๐Ÿ’ก9B Qwen3.5-9B almost wins reasoning game bigger models fail

โšก 30-Second TL;DR

What Changed

Game rules: 10 guesses, higher/lower + correct digits feedback

Why It Matters

Demonstrates compact 9B model's strong dual reasoning for 16GB VRAM users. Highlights potential for local small LLMs in complex logic tasks.

What To Do Next

Quantize Qwen3.5-9B to q4_k_m and benchmark on the provided math guessing prompt.

Who should care:Researchers & Academics

Key Points

  • โ€ขGame rules: 10 guesses, higher/lower + correct digits feedback
  • โ€ขQwen3.5-9B q4_k_m off by 1 digit (322785 vs 322755) on round 10
  • โ€ขOutperforms larger models like Cogito v1 14B and gpt-oss 20B
  • โ€ขPrompt guides binary search early, entropy later with bounds tracking

๐Ÿง  Deep Insight

Background and context from public sources โ€” not the original article. 8 sources cited.

๐Ÿ”‘ Enhanced Key Takeaways

  • โ€ขQwen3.5 introduces a flagship 397B-A17B model using hybrid linear attention and sparse mixture-of-experts architecture, activating only 17B parameters per forward pass for enhanced efficiency[2].
  • โ€ขQwen3.5 expands language support to 201 languages and dialects from 119, with a hosted version offering a 1M-token context window and multimodal capabilities for text, images, and video[2].
  • โ€ขCogito v1 14B, a competitor in the benchmark, employs a Mixture-of-Experts design similar to larger sparse models, activating around 3.6B-5.1B parameters per token despite its 14B total size[5][6].
๐Ÿ“Š Competitor Analysisโ–ธ Show
FeatureQwen3.5-9B (q4_k_m)Cogito v1 14Bgpt-oss 20B
Model Size9B14B20B
Activated ParamsDense (full)~3.6B-5.1B~3.6B
Context WindowNot specified131K131K
Inference SpeedHigh (quantized)~250-400 t/s~300-450 t/s
VRAM (quantized)Low (~4-6GB est.)~12-14GB~16GB
StrengthsMath game (10/10)Agentic tasksReasoning/coding
Pricing (API, est.)Open-weight (free)Open-weight$0.04-0.18/M tokens[5]

๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Technical Deep Dive

  • โ€ขQwen3.5 series features multimodal support for vision-language agents, processing text, images, and video with spatial reasoning and tool integration[2].
  • โ€ขgpt-oss 20B uses FP8 precision, supports 131K context length, and excels in function calling and structured output, with native tool use capabilities[1][4].
  • โ€ขCogito v1 14B (likely) leverages sparse MoE architecture, activating fewer parameters per token (e.g., 3.6B-5.1B) for efficiency in agentic workflows[5][6].
  • โ€ขQuantization like q4_k_m on Qwen3.5-9B reduces VRAM footprint significantly, enabling strong performance on consumer hardware for tasks like binary search[1].

๐Ÿ”ฎ Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources

Small quantized models like Qwen3.5-9B will dominate edge AI deployments by 2027
Its superior efficiency and low hallucination rate in math/reasoning tasks, combined with MoE trends, outperforms larger models on limited hardware[1][2].
Open-weight MoE models will close 90% of performance gap to closed APIs in agentic math by mid-2026
Benchmarks show Qwen3.5-9B surpassing gpt-oss 20B in specialized games, with scalable RL and 1M context enabling advanced workflows[2].

โณ Timeline

2025-04
gpt-oss 20B released by OpenAI as open-weight model with strong reasoning focus
2025-08
Qwen3 14B launched by Alibaba, emphasizing efficiency and multilingual support
2025-10
Early comparisons highlight Qwen3 14B vs gpt-oss 20B in coding and agent tasks
2026-01
Qwen3.5 series announced with 397B-A17B MoE and multimodal expansions
๐Ÿ“ฐ

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