---
license: apache-2.0
pipeline_tag: text-to-image
tags:
- 1-bit
- mlx
- apple-silicon
- on-device
- text-to-image
- diffusion
- flux
- prismml
- bonsai
base_model:
- prism-ml/bonsai-image-binary-4B-unpacked
---

<p align="center">
  <img src="./assets/bonsai-logo.svg" width="280" alt="Bonsai Image">
</p>

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://prismml.com"><b>Prism ML Website</b></a> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
  <a href="https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo/blob/main/bonsai-image-4b-whitepaper.pdf"><b>Whitepaper</b></a> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
  <a href="https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo"><b>Demo &amp; Examples</b></a> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
  <a href="https://discord.gg/prismml"><b>Discord</b></a>
</p>

# bonsai-image-binary-4B-mlx-1bit

Binary weight (1-bit) text-to-image diffusion transformer deployment for Apple Silicon

> **0.93 GB transformer** | **8.3×** smaller than FP16 | **9.4 s / 512²** on iPhone 17 Pro Max | **6 s / 512²** on M4 Pro | runs on Mac, iPhone, iPad

## Highlights

- **0.93 GB** diffusion transformer, down from **7.75 GB** for the FP16 FLUX.2 Klein 4B transformer
- Binary {−1, +1} transformer weights with FP16 group-wise scaling in the matrix-heavy transformer layers (Q/K/V projections, output projections, MLP weights)
- 3.42 GB Apple Silicon deployment payload including the 4-bit text encoder and FP16 VAE — text encoder is offloaded after prompt encode, so the denoising loop only keeps the compact transformer and VAE resident
- 4-step FlowMatch-Euler sampler with guidance = 1.0 and shift = 3.0 — no CFG, no negative prompts needed
- MLX-native 1-bit format for Apple Silicon, the same kernel path as our 1-bit language-model releases
- Cross-platform companion: also available as [gemlite 1-bit](https://huggingface.co/prism-ml/bonsai-image-binary-4B-gemlite-1bit) for NVIDIA GPUs

## Resources

- **[Whitepaper](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo/blob/main/bonsai-image-4b-whitepaper.pdf)** — full benchmarks, kernels, and memory analysis
- **[Demo repo](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo)** — one-command setup for Mac / Linux / Windows
- **[Discord](https://discord.gg/prismml)** — community + support
- **Kernels**: [MLX fork](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/mlx) (Apple Silicon) · [mlx-swift fork](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/mlx-swift) (iOS / macOS) — upstream PRs pending

## Model Overview

| Item                  | Specification                                                                         |
| :-------------------- | :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Base architecture     | FLUX.2 Klein 4B (MMDiT diffusion transformer)                                         |
| Parameters            | ~4.0B (transformer trunk)                                                             |
| Blocks                | 25 MMDiT blocks: 5 double-stream + 20 single-stream                                   |
| Sampler               | FlowMatchEuler, **4 steps**, guidance = 1.0, shift = 3.0                              |
| Text encoder          | Qwen3-4B at 4-bit (≈ 2.28 GB on-device, offloaded after prompt encode)                |
| VAE                   | Flux2 32-channel latent, tiled decode (128 px tiles)                                  |
| Native resolution     | 1024×1024 (also supports 512×512 and arbitrary multiples of 32)                       |
| Weight format         | MLX 1-bit g128, binary values + FP16 group-wise scales                                |
| **Transformer size**  | **0.93 GB** (8.3× smaller than 7.75 GB FP16)                                          |
| Total payload         | **3.42 GB** (4.7x smaller than the 15.97 GB FP16 transformer + text encoder + VAE)    |
| 1-bit coverage        | All 100 matmul-heavy linears in the 25 MMDiT blocks                                   |
| License               | Apache 2.0                                                                            |

## Binary Weight Representation: 1-bit g128

Each binary weight takes a value from {−1, +1} with one shared FP16 scale per group of 128 weights:

```
w_i = scale_g * b_i,    b_i in {−1, +1}
```

Binary values carry exactly 1 bit of information per weight. With one FP16 scale per group of 128, the effective storage is

```
b_eff ≈ 1 + 16/128 ≈ 1.125 bits/weight
```

This gives an idealized **14.2× reduction** relative to FP16 for the binary transformer layers. A small set of precision-sensitive supporting tensors remains in FP16, so the final 1-bit Bonsai Image 4B diffusion transformer is **0.93 GB**, an 8.3× reduction from the 7.75 GB FP16 FLUX.2 Klein 4B transformer.

The binary representation is applied to the matrix-heavy transformer layers, including Q / K / V projections, output projections, MLP linears, and the double-stream add-K / Q / V linears. Supporting tensors (less than 5% of the total parameters) such as modulation streams, embedders, output norm, and output projection remain FP16 for image quality and stability.

### Memory

| Format                     | Transformer size | Reduction | Ratio    |
| :------------------------- | ---------------: | --------: | -------: |
| FP16 FLUX.2 Klein 4B            | 7.75 GB          | —         | 1.0×     |
| **1-bit Bonsai Image 4B**       | **0.93 GB**    | **88.0%** | **8.3×** |

Apple Silicon deployment:

| Component                       | Size    |
| :------------------------------ | ------: |
| MLX 1-bit diffusion transformer | 0.97 GB |
| Compressed text encoder         | 2.28 GB |
| FP16 VAE                        | 0.17 GB |
| **Total payload**    | **3.42 GB** |

At runtime, the text encoder is offloaded after prompt encoding. During denoising, the repeated image-generation loop is dominated by the compact binary diffusion transformer and active image-generation components rather than the full payload.

End-to-end Mac M4 Pro mean-active memory pressure at 1024² is **1.95 GB** — a **7.4×** reduction vs the stock FP16 MFLUX pipeline (14.39 GB).

## Best Practices

- Sampler: FlowMatchEuler-discrete with 4 steps, guidance = 1.0 (no classifier-free guidance), shift = 3.0. The model is designed for 4 steps; running more steps does not improve quality significantly and can introduce artifacts.
- Resolution: native 1024² is the design target; 512² works for quick previews.
- Aspect ratios: multiples of 32 are supported, including 832×1248 and 1248×832.
- Prompting: natural-language prompts. Negative prompts are not required.
- Runtime memory: the text encoder is offloaded after prompt encoding, so the denoising loop is memory-light.

## Quickstart

### MLX (Python)

The simplest path is the [Bonsai Image Demo repo](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo), which sets up the full Bonsai Studio (FastAPI backend + Next.js frontend):

```bash
git clone https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/Bonsai-Image-Demo.git
cd Bonsai-Image-Demo
./setup.sh
BONSAI_VARIANT=binary ./scripts/download_model.sh
BONSAI_VARIANT=binary ./scripts/serve.sh
```

For a one-shot render without the studio frontend:

```bash
BONSAI_VARIANT=binary ./scripts/generate.sh --prompt "A bonsai tree in a quiet ceramic studio, soft morning light"
```

### MLX Swift (iOS / macOS)

Binary Bonsai Image 4B runs natively on iPhone and iPad via MLX Swift. Bonsai Studio for iPhone is available on the App Store; under the hood, it loads this model with the kernels in our [mlx-swift fork](https://github.com/PrismML-Eng/mlx-swift).

## Throughput (MLX / Apple Silicon)

Mac M4 Pro (48 GB unified memory), 4 denoising steps, fixed prompt and seed:

| Resolution    | s / step | s / image (mean ± std) | vs stock MFLUX FP16 |
| :------------ | -------: | ---------------------: | ------------------: |
| 512 × 512     | 1.50     | 6.01 ± 0.31 s          | **3.03×**           |
| 1024 × 1024   | 6.02     | **24.07 ± 0.03 s**     | **5.60×**           |

iPhone 17 Pro Max (A19 Pro, 12 GB unified memory), MLX Swift, same methodology:

| Resolution    | s / step | s / image |
| :------------ | -------: | --------: |
| 128 × 128     | 0.68     | 2.7 s     |
| 256 × 256     | 0.95     | 3.8 s     |
| 512 × 512     | 2.35     | **9.4 s** |
| 1024 × 1024   | 8.15     | **32.6 s**|

Stock FP16 FLUX.2 Klein 4B does not fit within iPhone 17 Pro Max's 12 GB unified memory budget; Bonsai Image 4B models do.

## Benchmarks

Evaluated with matched generation settings across the comparison set on H100. GenEval uses the official 512x512 protocol. For HPSv3 and DPG-Bench, larger-backbone rows are evaluated at 1024x1024, while smaller-backbone rows are evaluated at their native 512x512 setting. Higher is better for all three benchmarks.

| Model                       | Transformer (GB) | GenEval | HPSv3  | DPG-Bench |
| :-------------------------- | ---------------: | ------: | -----: | --------: |
| **Bonsai Image · Binary 4B**| **0.93**         | **0.671** | **11.15** | **0.822** |
| **Bonsai Image · Ternary 4B** | **1.21**       | **0.723** | **12.22** | **0.851** |
| FLUX.2 Klein 4B             | 7.75             | 0.819   | 12.84  | 0.853     |
| FLUX.1-schnell              | 23.8             | 0.716   | 12.67  | 0.848     |
| SDXL                        | 5.14             | 0.300   | 10.05  | 0.740     |
| PixArt-Σ XL 2               | 1.20             | 0.541   | 11.93  | 0.769     |
| Stable Diffusion 1.5        | 1.72             | 0.396   | 4.20   | 0.601     |
| BK-SDM-Small                | 0.98             | 0.297   | 3.05   | 0.559     |

The benchmark results show the intended quality-footprint trade-off. 1-bit Bonsai Image 4B is the footprint-oriented variant: it reduces the diffusion transformer below 1 GB while still delivering strong GenEval, HPSv3, and DPG-Bench results. The ternary companion is the quality-oriented variant, using a slightly larger representation to achieve very close visual quality and prompt fidelity to the original FLUX.2 Klein 4B model. 

Together, the Bonsai Image variants move the quality-footprint frontier: they bring modern diffusion-transformer behavior into a memory range previously occupied by much smaller, lower-capability models.

## Use Cases

- **Local creative tooling**: image generation directly on Mac, iPhone, and iPad
- **Private generation**: prompts and generated assets can remain local
- **Rapid iteration**: lower local latency and no remote queue for iterative creative workflows
- **Mobile deployment**: image generation on devices with unified-memory, thermal, and connectivity constraints
- **Commodity-GPU serving**: lower transformer footprint and reduced memory pressure for serving on CUDA GPUs
- **Enterprise and controlled inference**: local or private environments for data residency and compliance-sensitive workflows

## Limitations

- 1-bit Bonsai Image 4B is not bit-identical to the FP16 FLUX.2 Klein 4B model; it is a compact binary-weight deployment designed to deliver similar practical behavior at much smaller size.
- Image-generation quality remains prompt- and workflow-dependent. Small text, fine details, object counts, and strict compositional constraints should be evaluated for the target use case.
- Current commodity inference stacks do not yet expose fully native binary execution as a standard hardware path. This release uses practical MLX low-bit kernel paths on Apple Silicon and Gemlite low-bit GEMM on CUDA.
- After the diffusion transformer is made compact, other components such as the VAE can become more visible memory bottlenecks. The runtime mitigates this with text-encoder offload and tiled VAE decoding.

## Citation

```bibtex
@techreport{bonsaiimage4b,
    title   = {Bonsai Image 4B: Low-Bit Diffusion on Apple Silicon and Consumer GPUs},
    author  = {Prism ML},
    year    = {2026},
    month   = {May},
    url     = {https://prismml.com}
}
```

## Contact

For questions, feedback, or collaboration inquiries: **contact@prismml.com**