Someone got an offline LLM running on a 2015 Kindle Paperwhite, even if it’s quite slow
Okay, it's very slow. But it's still impressive.
In an impressive feat, someone has managed to run Quill, a chatbot, on a 2015 Kindle Paperwhite, even though it's quite slow. This project, called Inkwell, was developed by Pragyaan Gaur and shared on GitHub. The Kindle Paperwhite, originally designed for displaying ebooks, now serves a new purpose after being jailbroken and running an Alpine Linux userspace tailored for the e-ink device.
Among the features available in Inkwell are a Terminal, a chess game, and notably, DOOM. However, the most remarkable aspect is the chatbot feature. Quill runs SmolLM2 through llama.cpp on the Kindle's own processor, generating text word by word at a speed of 1.7 words per second with the quick model. A slower smart model can be added, reducing the output to a mere 0.7 words per second.
Importantly, all processing occurs on the device itself, with no data leaving it. This achievement, showcased on its GitHub repository, demonstrates that even an 11-year-old portable device, originally intended solely for e-book display, can be repurposed in a remarkable way.
Written by urgent.news from XDA Developers's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
