Qwen3.5-0.8B โ€” RYS Layer Surgery (GGUF)

A modified version of Qwen3.5-0.8B-Instruct produced by RYS layer duplication โ€” no training, no weight changes, just routing hidden states through a specific circuit twice.

Based on David Ng's RYS method.


Files

File Layers Size
Qwen3.5-0.8B-UD-Q4_K_XL.gguf 24 533 MiB
Qwen3.5-0.8B-rys_4-11-UD-Q4_K_XL.gguf 32 621 MiB

Probe scores

Scores from an internal sweep benchmark run during circuit search. Sample sizes are small โ€” treat these as directional indicators, not definitive benchmarks.

Model Math EQ Reasoning
Base (24 layers) 0.062 0.0 0.000
rys_4-11 (32 layers) 0.000 36.3 0.353
  • Math: Ng's partial-credit scoring on a small GSM8K sample
  • EQ: EQ-Bench-style emotional intelligence score (0โ€“100)
  • Reasoning: fraction correct across causal, date, logic, navigation, and GSM8K probes

Note: the math score drops to 0 in the RYS model. The base model's math score (0.062) is already very low for a 0.8B model.


What is RYS?

Transformers self-organise during training into functional circuits โ€” contiguous blocks of layers that act together. The RYS technique duplicates a specific block in the forward pass using the same weights, with no extra copies on disk beyond the GGUF file overhead:

Normal:   0 โ†’ 1 โ†’ โ€ฆ โ†’ 3 โ†’ 4 โ†’ 5 โ†’ 6 โ†’ 7 โ†’ 8 โ†’ 9 โ†’ 10 โ†’ 11 โ†’ 12 โ†’ โ€ฆ โ†’ 23
rys_4-11: 0 โ†’ 1 โ†’ โ€ฆ โ†’ 3 โ†’ 4 โ†’ 5 โ†’ 6 โ†’ 7 โ†’ 8 โ†’ 9 โ†’ 10 โ†’ 11
                           โ†’ 4 โ†’ 5 โ†’ 6 โ†’ 7 โ†’ 8 โ†’ 9 โ†’ 10 โ†’ 11 โ†’ 12 โ†’ โ€ฆ โ†’ 23

The model processes the circuit twice, without any weight changes or fine-tuning.


Hybrid Mamba/attention architecture constraint

Qwen3.5-0.8B is a hybrid SSM/attention model (full_attention_interval = 4): full attention every 4th layer, Gated DeltaNet SSM everywhere else. The architecture repeats 6 times:

3 ร— (DeltaNet โ†’ FFN) โ†’ 1 ร— (Attention โ†’ FFN)

This creates a hard constraint on layer surgery: the total layer count must remain divisible by 4.

  • Block size 4 โ†’ 24 + 4 = 28 layers (28 รท 4 = 7 โœ“)
  • Block size 8 โ†’ 24 + 8 = 32 layers (32 รท 4 = 8 โœ“)
  • Block size 3 โ†’ 24 + 3 = 27 layers (27 รท 4 = 6.75 โœ— โ†’ crash)

The winning circuit (layers 4โ€“11) spans exactly two complete SSM+Attention units, which appear to form a coherent functional block. No 4-layer sub-block within this range produced comparable improvements in the fine-grained sweep.


How the circuit was found

A two-pass sweep over the 24-layer model:

Pass 1 โ€” 8-layer blocks, stride 4, layers 0โ€“16:

  • (4, 12) dominant: EQ=36.3, reasoning=0.353 vs baseline EQ=0.0, reasoning=0.0

Pass 2 โ€” 4-layer blocks, stride 1, layers 4โ€“16:

  • No 4-layer sub-block matched the 8-layer result
  • Best 4-layer blocks: (11,15) reasoning=0.235, (7,11) EQ=4.73

The 8-layer block is the minimum effective circuit size for this model.


Usage

llama.cpp / llama-server

llama-server -m Qwen3.5-0.8B-rys_4-11.gguf -ngl 99 --port 8080

Thinking mode

Qwen3.5 defaults to thinking mode (<think>โ€ฆ</think>). Add /no_think to the system prompt for fast, direct answers:

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "/no_think"},
    {"role": "user",   "content": "Your question here"}
]

VRAM requirements

The model weights are ~621 MiB. Runs on any modern GPU or CPU.


Credits

License

Apache 2.0 (inherited from base model)

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