# What is LLaMA? Definition & Technical Mechanics

> **Source:** [SPIDITS AI AI Glossary](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary)  
> **Category:** Foundational AI  
> **Canonical Citation:** [https://spidits.com/ai-glossary/llama](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary/llama)

## Definition
LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI) is a family of state-of-the-art open-weights foundation models released by Meta. LLaMA catalyzed the open-source AI developer ecosystem by offering models that could run locally with high efficiency.

## Architectural Mechanics & Deep Dive
Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) is a highly influential family of open-weights Large Language Models developed and released by Meta. Llama catalyzed the open-source AI community by delivering state-of-the-art performance on par with proprietary models while permitting local execution, fine-tuning, and modification by research and commercial developers worldwide.

## Industry Applications & Real-World Use Cases
Local LLM execution, developer model fine-tuning, and offline AI apps

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Is LLaMA open source?
LLaMA is released under open-weights licenses allowing commercial use (subject to certain terms), though it is not strictly OSI open source since it restricts specific massive deployment scopes.

### What is quantization in relation to LLaMA?
A technique to shrink LLaMA parameters to run on consumer hardware like laptops or smartphones by converting weights from FP16 to 4-bit.

## Related Terminology
- [llm](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary/llm)
- [models](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary/models)
- [quantization](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary/quantization)

---
*From the SPIDITS AI Knowledge Base (336+ terms indexed). Explore full technical definitions: [https://spidits.com/ai-glossary](https://spidits.com/ai-glossary)*