---
license: mit
tags:
  - whisper
  - coreml
  - whisper.cpp
base_model: openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo
---

# whisper large-v3-turbo Core ML encoder, 8-bit (for whisper.cpp)

A Core ML version of the **encoder** of OpenAI's [whisper large-v3-turbo](https://huggingface.co/openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo), with weights **palettized to 8 bits**. It's for use with [whisper.cpp](https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp) (and whisper.rn) built with Core ML support, next to a `ggml-large-v3-turbo*.bin` model, so the encoder runs on the Apple Neural Engine.

Compared with the fp16 encoder published in [ggerganov/whisper.cpp](https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp) (`ggml-large-v3-turbo-encoder.mlmodelc.zip`), the weights are half the size (637,609,152 vs 1,273,969,152 bytes). On a Mac, the Neural Engine memory it holds drops from about 1,247 MB to 646 MB, which lets it run on 4 GB iPhones.

## File

`ggml-large-v3-turbo-encoder.mlmodelc.zip`: unzips to the `ggml-large-v3-turbo-encoder.mlmodelc/` folder (the name whisper.cpp looks for next to `ggml-large-v3-turbo-q5_0.bin`).

- Size: 570,709,613 bytes
- SHA-256: `5b06af945696ec364544e1c9633224f6c381a2ca89bebc61097011e8b16369c7`
- MD5: `89303dd190c60078a8716767c2b8e943`

## How it was built

- **Converter:** whisper.cpp v1.9.3's own `models/convert-whisper-to-coreml.py` (`--encoder-only True --optimize-ane True --quantize True`), with a minimum deployment target of iOS 16 and float32 inputs and outputs.
- **Compression:** coremltools 9.0 `OpPalettizerConfig(mode="kmeans", nbits=8, granularity="per_tensor")` on all weight tensors, then compiled with `xcrun coremlc compile`.
- **Pins:** torch 2.7.0, openai-whisper 20250625, ane_transformers 0.1.3, Python 3.12.
- **Reproducibility:** the regenerated fp16 weights are byte-identical to the published fp16 encoder.

## Accuracy (Google FLEURS `da_dk` test, all 930 utterances, whisper.cpp v1.9.3, Apple M4 Pro)

| Encoder | WER | CER |
| --- | --- | --- |
| ggml (Metal) | 14.11 % | 4.86 % |
| Core ML fp16 | 14.02 % | 4.83 % |
| **Core ML 8-bit (this)** | **13.93 %** | **4.81 %** |

The differences are within noise. Built for the meetnotes app (on-device meeting transcription).

## License

MIT, following the original whisper weights (© OpenAI).