Running Gemma 4 26B at 5 Tokens/Sec on a 13-Year-Old Xeon: The Art of Efficient AI Inference

Introduction: When Old Hardware Meets Modern AI In an era where AI capabilities seem to require ever-more-powerful hardware, a remarkable achievement stands out: running Google's Gemma 4 26B model at 5 tokens per second on a 13-year-old HP StoreVirtual storage appliance with no GPU. This isn't just a technical curiosity — it's a profound statement about the democratization of AI and the power of intelligent engineering. The hardware in question is a repurposed enterprise storage box with dual Xe...