QLAB research and development laboratory
QUALTEH Research & Development

The industrial AI lab where your solution is
proven before it goes live

We turn automation concepts into working proofs of concept — testing them on actual parts and industrial hardware before you ever install them on your production line.

From the lab

Running LLMs at the edge: what we measured

Seven open-weight LLM configurations, tested in QLAB on an HP ZGX Nano G1n AI Station (NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell, 128 GB unified memory).

  • Up to 9×

    faster with mixture-of-experts models at the same memory budget

  • 2.7×

    faster with 4-bit weights, with no quality loss detected on our tasks

  • 5×

    faster answers from a newer model generating at the same speed

Mixture-of-experts models are up to 9× faster at the same memory budget

Text generation speed vs memory used, seven model configurations

Generation speed and memory used per model configuration
ModelArchitectureMemory used by the model (GiB)Generation speed (tokens/s)
Qwen3.6-35B-A3BMixture-of-experts25.073.9
gpt-oss-20bMixture-of-experts15.461.5
gpt-oss-120bMixture-of-experts64.642.3
Qwen3.6-27B · 4-bitDense21.113.2
Qwen3.8-27B · 4-bitDense21.312.8
Qwen3.8-27B · 8-bitDense32.68.3
Qwen3.8-27B · 16-bitDense56.44.7

Mixture-of-experts models split their weights into many smaller experts and use only a few of them for each token. Using a similar amount of memory, gpt-oss-120b generated 42 tokens per second, against 5 for the dense Qwen3.8-27B at 16 bits.

We use this data to choose the model and hardware for SYA and on-premise AI deployments before anything is installed.

More from the benchmark
  • Bar charts for Qwen3.8-27B at 4, 8 and 16 bits: memory 21 / 33 / 56 GiB; speed 12.8 / 8.3 / 4.7 tokens/s; GPU energy per token 4.1 / 5.4 / 8.4 J
    Quantization: 4-bit weights make the same model 2.7× fasterFull size

    Storing the weights in 4 bits instead of 16 cut memory from 56 to 21 GiB and halved the energy per token. All three versions passed every quality task in our set, so the smaller one gave up nothing we could measure.

  • Bar chart of the time until the answer starts for a prompt of about 30,000 tokens: 6.3 to 12.1 s for mixture-of-experts models, 32.2 to 34.7 s for dense models
    Long documents: up to 5× less waiting for an answerFull size

    With a prompt of about 40 pages, the mixture-of-experts models started answering after 6–12 seconds and the dense models after 32–35. This is the wait users notice when an assistant reads long manuals, contracts or reports.

  • Bar chart of GPU energy per generated token: 0.64 to 1.16 J for mixture-of-experts models, 4.04 to 8.41 J for dense models
    Energy: up to 13× less GPU energy per tokenFull size

    Because they use only part of their weights for each token, the mixture-of-experts models needed 0.64–1.16 J per token, against 4.04–8.41 J for the dense models. On a system that runs all day, the difference adds up.

How we tested

Hardware
HP ZGX Nano G1n AI Station with an NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell chip. Its 128 GB of unified memory is shared by the CPU and GPU, so even the largest model tested, gpt-oss-120b at 65 GiB, fits on a single unit.
Models
Seven configurations of open-weight models, which can run entirely on your own hardware: three mixture-of-experts models (gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b, Qwen3.6-35B-A3B) and two dense 27B models (Qwen3.6-27B, and Qwen3.8-27B at 4, 8 and 16 bits).
Measured
Generation speed, memory used, time until the answer starts on a prompt of about 30,000 tokens, GPU energy per generated token, and answer quality on a small set of tasks.

Measured with Ollama, one request at a time, on our own unit (18–19 October 2026). Figures are medians of repeated runs; GPU power is GPU-only. The quality task set is small, so treat it as a signal, not a ranking.

QLAB

From concept to production-ready, without production risk

We rebuild your production conditions in our lab — parts, motion, optics, lighting and compute — and deliver a proof of concept tested on real industrial hardware.

QLAB vision cell
Lab capabilities
  • Industrial Edge AI Server

  • Industrial Edge AI Computers

  • Robot Arms

  • Conveyors

  • Industrial 2D Cameras

  • Industrial Lenses & Filters

  • Industrial Lighting

  • High-Precision 3D Scanner

  • Inspection Stands & Tables

  • Latest AI Models

  • Excellent Technology Stack

  • Expert Engineering Team

How we work

  1. 1

    Discovery & Feasibility

    We analyse your process, parts and quality requirements, and define measurable success criteria.

  2. 2

    Lab Cell Setup

    We build your inspection cell in QLAB: cameras, optics, lighting, motion and edge compute.

  3. 3

    Custom AI Training

    We capture data on your real parts and train dedicated, state-of-the-art AI models for your case.

  4. 4

    Lab-Tested PoC

    The complete solution runs end-to-end in the lab and is validated against the agreed criteria.

  5. 5

    Production Rollout

    Only then do we deploy to your production environment — predictably, with minimal disruption.

The team behind the lab

Engineers who speak software, optics, AI — and factory floor

Software DevelopmentMachine-Vision OpticsAI & Deep LearningCustom Model TrainingEdge AI DeploymentIndustrial EngineeringRobotics & Automation3D Metrology

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