llm-architectures-explained

/models

Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B

Alibaba Cloud (Qwen) · Qwen3 · open weights

Facts and where they come from

Released2025-07config.jsonconfig.jsonHugging Face repository creation date (api.createdAt)
Licenceapache-2.0config.jsonconfig.jsonREADME metadata: license
Total parameters30.5Blabmodel cardREADME: 30.5B in total and 3.3B activated
Active parameters3.3Blabmodel cardREADME: 3.3B activated
Context length256K tokenslabmodel cardREADME: 262,144 natively
Norm placementprecodemodelling codetransformers 5.18.0 / repo modelling code for qwen3_moe: input_layernorm before attention, post_attention_layernorm before the MLP
Norm typeRMSNormcodemodelling codetransformers 5.18.0 / repo modelling code for qwen3_moe: input_layernorm before attention, post_attention_layernorm before the MLP
QK-normyescodemodelling codetransformers 5.18.0 qwen3_moe: q_norm and k_norm
Positional encodingRoPEcodemodelling coderotary on the full head (default)
Parallel attention and MLPnocodemodelling codetransformers 5.18.0 / repo modelling code for qwen3_moe: input_layernorm before attention, post_attention_layernorm before the MLP

Architecture, drawn from the data

GQA 32q/4kv. Each column is one layer: its token mixer above, its feed-forward block below. Paler columns reuse another layer’s keys and values.

Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B: layer stack and blockslayers (48)mixer / FFNlayer 0: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 0: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 1: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 1: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 2: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 2: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 3: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 3: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 4: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 4: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 5: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 5: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 6: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 6: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 7: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 7: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 8: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 8: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 9: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 9: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 10: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 10: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 11: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 11: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 12: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 12: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 13: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 13: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 14: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 14: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 15: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 15: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 16: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 16: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 17: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 17: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 18: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 18: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 19: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 19: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 20: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 20: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 21: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 21: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 22: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 22: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 23: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 23: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 24: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 24: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 25: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 25: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 26: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 26: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 27: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 27: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 28: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 28: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 29: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 29: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 30: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 30: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 31: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 31: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 32: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 32: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 33: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 33: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 34: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 34: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 35: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 35: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 36: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 36: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 37: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 37: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 38: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 38: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 39: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 39: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 40: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 40: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 41: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 41: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 42: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 42: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 43: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 43: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 44: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 44: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 45: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 45: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 46: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 46: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768layer 47: GQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128layer 47: MoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 76802447× 48normGQA: 32 query / 4 KV heads · head 128+normMoE: 128 experts, 8 active · expert 768+full attentionMoE FFN

Modelled costs

From the cost model, batch size 1. Totals the lab states are in the table above; differences come from rounding, from what a lab counts, or from parts the model does not describe (listed on the about page).

Parameters (modelled)30.5B
Active per token (modelled)3.35B
Without embeddings and output head29.9B total, 2.73B active
Published weights (Hugging Face count)30.5B
KV cache per token, BF16 (layers that grow with context)96 KiB
KV cache + state at 256K tokens, BF1624 GiB
Decode FLOPs per token at 4K context9.3 GFLOP
Prefill FLOPs for a 4K prompt29 TFLOP

KV cache against context

Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B: KV cache bytes against context length101001,00010,000100,000980 KiB9.5 MiB95 MiB950 MiB9.3 GiBcontext (tokens)KV cache + state (BF16)Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B

Compare with other models →

Every architecture field

FieldValueSource
d_model2,048config.jsonconfig.jsonhidden_size
vocab151,936config.jsonconfig.jsonvocab_size
tied_embeddingsfalseconfig.jsonconfig.jsontie_word_embeddings
mixers.full.typeattncodemodelling codeattention block
mixers.full.heads32config.jsonconfig.jsonnum_attention_heads
mixers.full.kv_heads4config.jsonconfig.jsonnum_key_value_heads
mixers.full.head_dim128config.jsonconfig.jsonhead_dim
mixers.full.qk_normtruecodemodelling codetransformers 5.18.0 qwen3_moe: q_norm and k_norm
ffns.moe.typemoecodemodelling codeMoE block
ffns.moe.experts128config.jsonconfig.jsonnum_experts
ffns.moe.active8config.jsonconfig.jsonnum_experts_per_tok
ffns.moe.d_expert768config.jsonconfig.jsonmoe_intermediate_size
ffns.moe.gatedtruecodemodelling codeexperts are gated MLPs
layout48× full/moeconfig.jsonconfig.jsonnum_hidden_layers

Sources

Listed in the LLM Architecture Gallery checklist as “Qwen3 Coder Flash (30B-A3B)” (name only; see about).