Google unveils open source Gemma 3 model with 128k context window

Even as large language and reasoning models remain popular, organizations increasingly turn to smaller models to run AI processes with fewer energy and cost concerns. 

While some organizations are distilling larger models to smaller versions, model providers like Google continue to release small language models (SLMs) as an alternative to large language models (LLMs), which may cost more to run without sacrificing performance or accuracy. 

With that in mind, Google has released the latest version of its small model, Gemma, which features expanded context windows, larger parameters and more multimodal reasoning capabilities. 

Gemma 3, which has the same processing power as larger Gemini 2.0 models, remains best used by smaller devices like phones and laptops. The new model has four sizes: 1B, 4B, 12B and 27B parameters. 

With a larger context window of 128K tokens — by contrast, Gemma 2 had a context window of ...