Building Cambodia's First Khmer-Native Large Language Model
A public-good AI for 16 million voices.
Why It Matters
Khmer content online
Khmer speakers
Native Khmer LLMs
Development Roadmap
Data Collection
50M+ tokens of high-quality Khmer text
Preprocessing
Cleaning and tokenization pipeline
Model Architecture
Transformer design optimization
Initial Training
Base model training phase
Fine-tuning
Task-specific optimization
Public Release
Open-source model release
Technical Specifications
Model Size
7B-13B parametersOptimal balance between performance and efficiency
Architecture
Transformer-basedModern attention mechanism with Khmer-specific adaptations
Training Data
50M+ tokensHigh-quality Khmer text from diverse sources
Context Length
8K tokensExtended context for better understanding
Vocabulary Size
32K tokensComprehensive Khmer subword tokenization
Training Hardware
A100 GPUsHigh-performance compute infrastructure
Expected Performance Benchmarks
| Task | Metric | Target | Current |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khmer Text Generation | BLEU Score | 25+ | TBD |
| Khmer-English Translation | BLEU Score | 30+ | TBD |
| Khmer Sentiment Analysis | F1 Score | 0.85+ | TBD |
| Khmer Q&A | Exact Match | 60%+ | TBD |
Model Architecture
Transformer Design
- • Multi-head attention mechanism optimized for Khmer script
- • Custom tokenization for Khmer syllable structure
- • Positional encoding adapted for Khmer text patterns
- • Gradient checkpointing for memory efficiency
Training Strategy
- • Progressive training from 1B to final parameter count
- • Mixed precision training (FP16/BF16)
- • Distributed training across multiple GPUs
- • Curriculum learning with difficulty progression
Get Involved
Societal Impact & Applications
Education
Khmer language learning tools, automated essay grading, and educational content generation
Government
Document processing, citizen services chatbots, and policy information accessibility
Business
Customer service automation, content creation, and Khmer-English translation services
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Khmer LLM project?
The Khmer LLM is Cambodia's first large language model specifically designed for the Khmer language. It's a 7B-13B parameter transformer model trained on over 50 million tokens of high-quality Khmer text to serve Cambodia's 16 million Khmer speakers.
How big will the Khmer language model be?
We're targeting 7B-13B parameters for optimal performance-efficiency balance. This size provides strong language understanding while remaining deployable on standard hardware.
What licensing will the Khmer LLM use?
Open-source under Apache 2.0 license for maximum accessibility. This ensures the model can be freely used, modified, and distributed by researchers, developers, and organizations.
How do you ensure Khmer LLM safety?
Comprehensive bias testing and safety evaluations throughout development. We implement rigorous testing protocols, community feedback loops, and ethical AI guidelines specific to Khmer cultural context.
What training data sources are used for the Khmer LLM?
Our training dataset includes news articles, literature, educational content, government documents, and web content - all in Khmer. We prioritize high-quality, diverse sources while respecting copyright and privacy.
What computational resources are needed to train the Khmer LLM?
Training requires significant GPU compute, approximately 1000+ A100 GPU hours. We estimate $50,000-100,000 in compute costs, which is why we're seeking community support and compute donations.
What are the expected performance benchmarks for Khmer LLM?
We target BLEU scores of 25+ for Khmer text generation, 30+ for Khmer-English translation, F1 scores of 0.85+ for sentiment analysis, and 60%+ exact match for Khmer Q&A tasks.
What are potential use cases for the Khmer LLM?
Applications include Khmer chatbots, translation services, content generation, educational tools, government document processing, customer service automation, and research in Khmer linguistics and NLP.
How can organizations contribute to the Khmer LLM project?
Organizations can sponsor compute nodes ($5,000-25,000), donate Khmer text datasets, provide technical expertise, or join our research collaboration through Slack and GitHub.
When will the Khmer LLM be publicly released?
We target public release in Q4 2025, following completion of training, safety testing, and community evaluation. The model will be available on Hugging Face with full documentation and usage examples.