CHAPTER 04 · LoRA, Fine-Tuning Giant Models on a Budget · 1 / 6
Why normal fine-tuning hurts
When you fine-tune a model the usual way, you adjust all of its parameters. For a model with billions of them, this causes three pains:
- Memory. Training needs several times more memory than just running the model, because it has to track how to adjust every single parameter. This can require many expensive GPUs.
- Storage. Every fine-tuned copy is a full-size model. If you want ten specialized versions, you store ten enormous files.
- Cost and time. Updating billions of dials is slow and burns a lot of money.
For most people and companies, this is simply out of reach. LoRA changes that.