KV Caching, Prefix Sharing, and Memory Layouts: The Data Structures Behind Fast LLM Inference
Large Language Models (LLMs) have reshaped how we build applications, but behind the scenes, their performance depends heavily on the data structures and algorithms that support them. While pre-training and fine-tuning often receive the spotlight, the real engineering challenge emerges in production systems: delivering fast, cost-efficient inference at scale.
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