What Is This?
Darwin-27B-KR is a second-generation Darwin model bred from two complementary parents:
- Father (Darwin-27B-Opus): Qwen3.5-27B evolved with Claude 4.6 Opus reasoning FFN — strong in logical reasoning and deep inference
- Mother (Qwen3.5-27B-KoSFT): Qwen3.5-27B fine-tuned with 230K+ Korean language samples — strong in Korean cultural knowledge and linguistic understanding (private, purpose-bred for Korean knowledge reinforcement)
The Darwin V6 engine automatically discovered that 93.3% of FFN layers should come from the Mother, while preserving 93.2% of the Father's Attention layers — confirming the core Darwin principle: FFN carries knowledge, Attention carries reasoning.
The result: the child outperforms both parents on every Korean benchmark category, a phenomenon known as Hybrid Vigor (잡종강세).
Hybrid Vigor: 4-Generation CLIcK Comparison
CLIcK (Cultural and Linguistic Intelligence in Korean) — 200 questions, 0-shot, loglikelihood evaluation.
Table with columns: Generation, Model, CLIcK (Overall), Culture, Language| Generation | Model | CLIcK (Overall) | Culture | Language |
|---|
| Gen 0 (Ancestor) | Qwen3.5-27B | 69.52% | 71.84% | 64.66% |
| Gen 1 (Father) | Darwin-27B-Opus | 70.19% | 72.91% | 64.47% |
| — (Mother) | Qwen3.5-27B-KoSFT | 74.74% | 76.95% | 70.11% |
| Gen 2 (Child) | Darwin-27B-KR | 75.59% ★ | 77.85% ★ | 70.86% ★ |
The child surpasses both parents. Two generations of zero-training evolution achieved +6.07%p over the original Qwen3.5-27B.
Detailed Category Breakdown
Table with columns: Category, Ancestor, Father, Mother, Child, Best| Category | Ancestor | Father | Mother | Child | Best |
|---|
| Economy | 93.22% | 93.22% | 94.92% | 94.92% | Mother=Child |
| Geography | 70.23% | 70.23% | 75.57% | 75.57% | Mother=Child |
| History |
Child wins 7 out of 11 categories. The largest gains are in Law (+9.5%p over Father), Functional Language (+7.6%p), and History (+6.5%p).
Why This Matters
1. Hybrid Vigor at 27B Scale
Previously demonstrated at 4B (Darwin-4B-Genesis, CLIcK 92%). Now confirmed at 27B: the child exceeds both parents on Korean cultural and linguistic intelligence with zero additional training.
2. CMA-ES Discovered the Optimal Breeding Strategy
The evolutionary optimizer automatically determined:
- FFN ratio: 93.3% → Almost entirely Mother's Korean knowledge
- Attention ratio: 6.8% → Almost entirely Father's reasoning chains
- This independently confirms our finding: "FFN = knowledge (safe to swap), Attention = reasoning (must preserve)"
3. Ancestral Knowledge Tracking
By evaluating all four generations (Ancestor → Father → Mother → Child), we can trace how knowledge flows through evolutionary breeding:
- Father inherits Claude's reasoning but loses some Korean knowledge
- Mother gains Korean knowledge through SFT
- Child combines both — inheriting the best of each lineage
4. Zero Training Cost
Table with columns: This Model, Typical Fine-Tuning | This Model | Typical Fine-Tuning |
|---|
| GPU | H100 × 1 | 8-64 GPUs |
| Time | ~2.5 hours | Days to weeks |
| Training data | 0 tokens | Millions of tokens |
| Training compute | Fitness evaluation only | Full gradient updates |
How It Works: Evolutionary FFN Breeding
Father: Darwin-27B-Opus (Claude reasoning FFN)
Mother: Qwen3.5-27B-KoSFT (Korean knowledge FFN)
Both: hidden_size=4096, intermediate=17408, 64 layers
= 100% structurally compatible
Method: CMA-ES optimizes per-block breeding ratios
across 14 genome dimensions
Fitness: kmmlu_lite (Korean knowledge benchmark)
Result: Child inherits Mother's Korean FFN knowledge
while preserving Father's reasoning Attention
Optimal Genome (Discovered by CMA-ES)
global_ratio: 0.4812 Overall 48:52 Father:Mother balance
attn_ratio: 0.0681 Attention 93.2% from Father (reasoning preserved!)
ffn_ratio: 0.9334 FFN 93.3% from Mother (Korean knowledge absorbed!)
embed_ratio: 0.3678 Embedding 63:37 Father:Mother
density_a: 0.9699 Father density (DARE sparsity)
density_b: 0.9767 Mother density (DARE sparsity)
mri_trust: 0.5333 MRI guidance weight
Block-Level Ratios
Block 0 (L0-10): 0.6041 Mother-leaning (early layers)
Block 1 (L11-21): 0.4107 Balanced
Block 2 (L22-32): 0.3975 Father-leaning (core reasoning)
Block 3 (L33-43): 0.6078 Mother-leaning (knowledge layers)
Block 4 (L44-54): 0.7820 Strong Mother (Korean knowledge peak)
Block 5 (L55-64): 0.3960 Father-leaning (output reasoning)
Key insight: CMA-ES applied the strongest Mother influence to Block 4 (L44-54), which corresponds to deep knowledge layers, while preserving Father's reasoning in Blocks 2 and 5.
Evolution Parameters
Table with columns: Setting, Value| Setting | Value |
|---|
| Engine | Darwin V6 (Diagnostic-Guided Evolutionary Merge) |
| Merge method | DARE-TIES (direct PyTorch, no mergekit dependency) |
| Population size | 16 |
| Phase 1 (proxy search) | 150 steps |
| Phase 2 (real merge) | 25 steps, top 5 elite |
| Fitness function | kmmlu_lite (Korean knowledge) |
| Best fitness | 0.8274 (82.74%) |
| MRI guidance | Enabled (static + probe analysis) |
| Total time |
Family Tree
Qwen/Qwen3.5-27B (Ancestor, CLIcK 69.52%)
├── × Jackrong/Claude-4.6-Opus-Reasoning-Distilled
│ └── Darwin-27B-Opus (Father, Gen 1, CLIcK 70.19%)
│ │ + Claude reasoning FFN
│ │ + GPQA Diamond 74.7% greedy
│ │
│ └── × Qwen3.5-27B-KoSFT (Mother, CLIcK 74.74%)
│ │ + 230K Korean SFT samples
│ │ + K-AI Leaderboard caliber
│ │
│ └── ★ Darwin-27B-KR (Child, Gen 2, CLIcK 75.59%)
│ Hybrid Vigor: surpasses BOTH parents!
│ FFN 93.3% Mother + Attention 93.2% Father
DNA Composition
Qwen3.5-27B (foundation) ~40%
Claude 4.6 Opus (reasoning patterns) ~5% (via Father's Attention)
Korean SFT (cultural knowledge) ~55% (via Mother's FFN)
Model Specifications
Table | |
|---|
| Architecture | Qwen3.5 Dense (GatedDeltaNet) |
| Parameters | 27B |
| Hidden Size | 4096 |
| Intermediate Size | 17408 |
| Layers | 64 |
| Context Length | 262,144 (extensible to 1M via YaRN) |
| Precision | BF16 |
| Languages | 201 |
| Thinking | Enabled (chain-of-thought reasoning) |
Usage
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
import torch
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(
"FINAL-Bench/Darwin-27B-KR", trust_remote_code=True
)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
"FINAL-Bench/Darwin-27B-KR",
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
device_map="auto",
trust_remote_code=True,
)
messages = [{"role": "user", "content": "한국의 전통 혼례 절차에 대해 설명해주세요."}]
text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
messages, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True
)
inputs = tokenizer(text, return_tensors="pt").to(model.device)
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=4096, do_sample=False)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:], skip_special_tokens=True))
VRAM Requirements
Table with columns: Setup, VRAM, Status| Setup | VRAM | Status |
|---|
| BF16 Full Precision | ~55 GB | H100 single GPU |
| NVIDIA H100 80GB | 80 GB | Very comfortable |
| 2× RTX 4090 48GB | 48 GB | Tensor parallel |
| 4-bit Quantized | ~16 GB | RTX 4090 single GPU |
Darwin 27B Family
Table with columns: Model, Gen, Role, CLIcK, GPQA, Specialty| Model | Gen | Role | CLIcK | GPQA | Specialty |
|---|
| Qwen3.5-27B | Gen 0 | Ancestor | 69.52% | 85.5% | Foundation |
| Darwin-27B-Opus | Gen 1 | Father | 70.19% | 74.7%* | Claude reasoning |
| Qwen3.5-27B-KoSFT | — | Mother |
*GPQA evaluated with greedy decoding; maj@8 retry in progress (estimated 88.9%)
Key Findings
-
FFN = Knowledge, Attention = Reasoning — CMA-ES independently discovered this by assigning 93.3% FFN from Mother (Korean) and 93.2% Attention from Father (reasoning)
-
Hybrid Vigor scales with model size — Confirmed at 4B (Genesis, CLIcK 92%) and now at 27B (KR, CLIcK 75.59%)
-
Zero-training evolution works recursively — Gen 0 → Gen 1 → Gen 2, each generation improving, with zero gradient updates
-
Ancestral knowledge is preserved — Despite two generations of breeding, core Qwen3.5-27B capabilities remain intact
-
Korean knowledge transfers through FFN — The Mother's 230K Korean SFT knowledge was successfully transplanted into the child via FFN breeding
Roadmap
References
Built By
Table | |
|---|
| Developer | VIDRAFT |
| Engine | Darwin V6 (Diagnostic-Guided Evolutionary Merge) |
| Generation | Generation 2 — Korean Hybrid Vigor |
| Architecture | Qwen3.5-27B Dense |
| License | Apache 2.0 |
Citation
@misc{vidraft_darwin_27b_kr_2026,
title = {Darwin-27B-KR: Korean Hybrid Vigor through Evolutionary FFN Breeding},
subtitle = {Child Surpasses Both Parents on Korean Cultural Intelligence with Zero Training},
author = {VIDRAFT},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Hugging Face},
howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/FINAL-Bench/Darwin-27B-KR}}
}