Memory Allocation Failed

[Mr-Howl77]

Total noob here, so please be patient. I'm trying to run a model. Llama comes back with "ggml_vulkan: Memory allocation of size 49152 failed." Does this mean I just don't have enough RAM? Is there something I can do to get things working? I am running off a laptop, but it has 32GB of RAM. If anyone who is patient enough to help me out needs more info, just ask (and be prepared to tell me how to get it).

Thanks in advance!

Edit 1: I was told that the name of the model and the exact error are important information. The model is c4ai-command-a-03-2025-Q3_K_L, a quantized GGUF version of Cohere's Command A. The exact error is
ggml_vulkan: vk::Device::allocateMemory: ErrorOutOfDeviceMemory
Thanks again for everyone trying to help me!

[bogdanr]

48 KiB is a very small allocation. Your 32 GB of system RAM is not the limit. The Vulkan backend allocates on the GPU, and the memory of the GPU is already full.

Try this first

Run on the CPU only:

-dev none

Or give the GPU fewer layers:

-ngl 10

-ngl has the default value auto. Thus llama.cpp tries to put as many layers as possible on the GPU. On a laptop GPU this attempt is often too large.

Look at your device

Add --list-devices to your command. It prints each device and the free memory of that device. Compare that value with the size of your model file. The model must be smaller than the free memory.

For the exact cause

The backend writes a second line directly after the line that you sent:

ggml_vulkan: Memory allocation of size 49152 failed.
ggml_vulkan: <the Vulkan error>

The second line names the cause, for example ErrorOutOfDeviceMemory. Please add that line and the name of your model.

[Mr-Howl77]

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I updated the main post with the model name and error. I tried the -ngl 10 and it gave the same error. I have told llama.cpp to run it with -dev none and it is still loading at the time of writing. I am cautiously optimistic, since I was able to load a smaller model successfully, and it took a while before anything happened.

Edit: It worked! It took forever and a half to load the model, but it works! Thank you so much for helping me!