@CohereLabs just released 🌿 Tiny Aya: a fully open-source 3B parameter model that speaks 70+ languages 🌍! But there’s a catch:
Tiny Aya is just a language model. It doesn’t support tool calling, the key capability that turns frontier models into powerful *agents*. So the real question is:
How hard is it to turn Tiny Aya into an agent?
Turns out… it’s simple, thanks to Hugging Face TRL. We’re sharing a hands-on example showing how to train Tiny Aya to turn it into a tool-calling agent using TRL, unlocking what could become the first *massively multilingual open agent*.
After I began learning MLOps I realized that I needed some kind of home lab, there are a lot of GPUs that I need to learn how to set up and test. So I spent some time to do a researching which platform I could buy or build. My requirements ware: - Limited budget - Power supply 1 kW or higher - Few PCIe slots to be able to install more than one gpu - Zero maintenance cost, I don't want spend a lot of time or money to maintain lab hardware, except for the GPUs
I chose the Intel Mac Pro 7.1: - Prices on eBay acceptable - Excelent cooling - 1.4 kW power supply - 7 PCIe slots - Zero maintenance: I don't need to do anything with the Mac Pro hardware; it just works - Classic UEFI boot loader
It requires a bit of OS preparation: 1. Install Ubuntu 24.04 (it works with the general PC ISO image) 2. Set up T2 drivers
3. Install t2fanrd to manually manage fans (/etc/t2fand.conf) https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/fan/ 4. Fix PCIe BAR: add pci=realloc to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT so the Linux kernel will properly initializes server GPUs without Graphics Output Protocol 5. Install NVIDIA GPU driver:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-570
And it works! I was able to run server-grade Nvidia Tesla P100 (required DIY air duct), and consumer Nvidia Titan X, Titan V, GTX 1080 cards on the old Mac Pro 7.1 - even three in parallel.