diff --git a/examples/train-text-from-scratch/train-text-from-scratch.cpp b/examples/train-text-from-scratch/train-text-from-scratch.cpp
index 9ee255f4e..ae3f79c63 100644
--- a/examples/train-text-from-scratch/train-text-from-scratch.cpp
+++ b/examples/train-text-from-scratch/train-text-from-scratch.cpp
@@ -2090,22 +2090,39 @@ struct ggml_tensor * forward_batch_wo_cache_flash_attn_train_grad_checkpointing(
     struct ggml_tensor * t01 = expand(gf, ggml_get_rows(ctx0, model->tok_embeddings, t00)); assert_shape_2d(t01, n_embd, N*n_batch);
 
 
+    {
+        // given: n, u, v
+        // objective: minimize(a*u+b*v) where a*b=n, a>0, b>0
+        // b=n/a
+        // minimize(a*u+v*n/a)
+        // diff(a*u+v*n/a, a) = u - (v*n/a)/a
+        // diff(a*u+v*n/a, a) == 0
+        // u - (v*n/a)/a == 0
+        // u == v*n/(a*a)
+        // u*a*a = v*n
+        // a*a = v*n/u
+        // a = sqrt(n*v/u)
+    }
+
+    float memcost_checkpoint   = n_embd;           // (..)*N*n_batch
+    float memcost_snd_fwd_pass = 14*n_embd+4*n_ff; // (..)*N*n_batch
+
+    int n_checkstep = (int)(sqrtf(n_layer*memcost_checkpoint/memcost_snd_fwd_pass) + 0.5f);
+    if (n_checkstep < 1) {
+        n_checkstep = 1;
+    }
     std::vector<int> checkpoints;
-    // for (int il = 0; il < n_layer; ++il) {
-    //     checkpoints.push_back(il);
-    // }
-    // n_check: number of layers between checkpoints
-    int n_check = (int)(sqrtf(n_layer) + 0.5f);
-    printf("%s: n_check = %d\n", __func__, n_check);
-    for (int chk = n_check-1; chk+1 < n_layer; chk += n_check) {
+    for (int chk = n_checkstep-1; chk+1 < n_layer; chk += n_checkstep) {
         checkpoints.push_back(chk);
     }
+    int n_check = checkpoints.size();
+    // printf("%s: n_check = %d n_checkstep = %d\n", __func__, n_check, n_checkstep);
 
-    for (int i = 0; i < checkpoints.size(); ++i) {
-        printf("%s: checkpoint #%d = %d\n", __func__, i, checkpoints[i]);
-    }
+    // for (int i = 0; i < n_check; ++i) {
+    //     printf("%s: checkpoint #%d = %d\n", __func__, i, checkpoints[i]);
+    // }
 
-    // example for 16 layers:
+    // example for 16 layers and memcost_checkpoint=memcost_snd_fwd_pass:
     // inp  ~    implicit zeroth checkpoint == input
     // L00 f 4b  [
     // L01 f 4b    4th second forward pass