diff --git a/src/llama.cpp b/src/llama.cpp
index 9c4f2aa721640..e0fe8013b0ad2 100644
--- a/src/llama.cpp
+++ b/src/llama.cpp
@@ -4901,7 +4901,6 @@ static void llm_load_hparams(
             } break;
         case LLM_ARCH_PHI3:
             {
-                ml.get_key(LLM_KV_ATTENTION_SLIDING_WINDOW, hparams.n_swa);
                 ml.get_key(LLM_KV_ATTENTION_LAYERNORM_RMS_EPS, hparams.f_norm_rms_eps);
 
                 switch (hparams.n_layer) {
@@ -4910,6 +4909,22 @@ static void llm_load_hparams(
                     case 40: model.type = e_model::MODEL_14B; break;
                     default: model.type = e_model::MODEL_UNKNOWN;
                 }
+
+                // for backward compatibility ; see: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/8931
+                if ((hparams.n_layer == 32 || hparams.n_layer == 40) && hparams.n_ctx_train == 4096) {
+                    // default value for Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct and Phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
+                    hparams.n_swa = 2047;
+                } else if (hparams.n_layer == 32 && hparams.n_head_kv(0) == 32 && hparams.n_ctx_train == 131072) {
+                    // default value for Phi-3-mini-128k-instruct
+                    hparams.n_swa = 262144;
+                } else if (hparams.n_layer == 40 && hparams.n_ctx_train == 131072) {
+                    // default value for Phi-3-medium-128k-instruct
+                    hparams.n_swa = 131072;
+                }
+                bool found_swa = ml.get_key(LLM_KV_ATTENTION_SLIDING_WINDOW, hparams.n_swa, false);
+                if (!found_swa && hparams.n_swa == 0) {
+                    throw std::runtime_error("invalid value for sliding_window");
+                }
             } break;
         case LLM_ARCH_PLAMO:
             {