Hi, Could you explain a bit what's the difference between Whisper.cpp vs Whisper?

[shruru]

Hi , I am newbie. I was wondering which method to choose from an app. it gives me 2 options Whisper.cpp and Whisper. So I would like to ask what's the main differences between those two , speed-wise and the accuracy. Thank you ~~

[ggerganov]

Hi! Whisper is the original speech recognition model created and released by OpenAI. It is implemented in Python and supports running both on the CPU and on the GPU.

whisper.cpp is a custom inference implementation of the same model. It's implemented in C/C++ and runs only on the CPU. It tries to provide the same functionality as the original, but there are differences in the implementation.

In terms of speed, Whisper running on a GPU would in general be more efficient than the other options - multiple times faster on modern GPUs. However, if you want to run the model on a CPU, in some cases whisper.cpp can give you advantage. For example, currently on Apple Silicon, whisper.cpp should be faster.

In terms of accuracy, Whisper is the "gold standard". whisper.cpp should be similar and sometimes worse.

More information is available in the F.A.Q. discussion.