local intelligence

can it run

Can the Mac mini M4 (32GB) run PHI4 mini 3.8B?

YES

Comfortably. 32GB of memory against a 4GB working set leaves headroom for context, the OS, and anything else you're running.

~38–48 tok/s

weights 2.5GB + KV cache 0.5GB at 4k context vs ~30GB usable → full. 3.0 GB needed of 30 GB usable — headroom for context

computed roofline: 120 GB/s × 0.80–1.00 efficiency window / 2.5GB (Q4_K_M) — bands, never points. Small models (under ~4.5B) run BELOW these bands — kernel-launch overhead keeps them from saturating bandwidth (measured against community medians, 09-06).

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Specs

model file2.5GB (GGUF Q4_K_M)
minimum memory4GB working set
this machine32GB unified
paramsmini 3.8B
licensemit
price$999

Run it

model files: hugging face ↗

easy run: ollama pull phi4-mini

runs with: ollama · llama.cpp · koboldcpp · lm studio

Alternatives

no alternatives — every machine in the catalog can run this one.

Buy

Apple ↗ · Amazon ↗

2026-09-17 · ← full hardware catalog · prices verified at source, may drift