Instructions to use google/gemma-3n-E2B-it with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.

Libraries

How to use google/gemma-3n-E2B-it with Transformers:

# Use a pipeline as a high-level helper
from transformers import pipeline

pipe = pipeline("image-text-to-text", model="google/gemma-3n-E2B-it")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
pipe(text=messages)

# Load model directly
from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoModelForImageTextToText

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained("google/gemma-3n-E2B-it")
model = AutoModelForImageTextToText.from_pretrained("google/gemma-3n-E2B-it")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
inputs = processor.apply_chat_template(
	messages,
	add_generation_prompt=True,
	tokenize=True,
	return_dict=True,
	return_tensors="pt",
).to(model.device)

outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=40)
print(processor.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:]))

Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
Local Apps

vLLM

How to use google/gemma-3n-E2B-it with vLLM:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install vLLM from pip:
pip install vllm
# Start the vLLM server:
vllm serve "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it"
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker

docker model run hf.co/google/gemma-3n-E2B-it

SGLang

How to use google/gemma-3n-E2B-it with SGLang:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install SGLang from pip:
pip install sglang
# Start the SGLang server:
python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it" \
    --host 0.0.0.0 \
    --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker images

docker run --gpus all \
    --shm-size 32g \
    -p 30000:30000 \
    -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
    --env "HF_TOKEN=<secret>" \
    --ipc=host \
    lmsysorg/sglang:latest \
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it" \
        --host 0.0.0.0 \
        --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3n-E2B-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Docker Model Runner
How to use google/gemma-3n-E2B-it with Docker Model Runner:
```
docker model run hf.co/google/gemma-3n-E2B-it
```

CPU support

#12

by travisking - opened Jul 9, 2025

Discussion

travisking

Jul 9, 2025

Given that gemma-3n is meant for edge devices, is there/will there be support for CPU inference (even quantized)? All examples seem to use CUDA, and when I tried some attempts at CPU inference (both naive and with torchao quant) it just hung at inference forever and never finished.

I understand that there are llama.cpp quants but they are text-only (at time of writing) so a no-go for me as I need the multimodal input features.

travisking

Jul 9, 2025

cc @sergiopaniego @ariG23498

metalglot

Aug 1, 2025

I've used CPU inference, it works, it's just VERY slow - 1-3 tokens/second for a text input inference.

Still working on image processing though..

lkv

Google org Sep 12, 2025

Hi,

Yes, there is a support for CPU inference for quantized Gemma models, including multimodal ones. The reason your attempts hung is likely due to unoptimized frameworks. standard inference with libraries like transformers is often optimized for a GPU, and naive CPU execution can be extremely slow, or as you experienced.

The llama.cpp project has implemented multimodal support through a dedicated library and a new command -line tool. You will need to compile llama.cpp from source or use a package that pulls from the latest HEAD of the repository to access this feature.

Kindly refer this link for more information. this link points to the specific document that explains how to use multimodal models with the llama.cpp framework , including the requirement for the separate mmproj file.

Thank you.

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