Towards Understanding Systems Trade-offs in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Model Inference

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Shen, Michael, Umar, Muhammad, Maeng, Kiwan, Suh, G. Edward, Gupta, Udit
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Shen, Michael
Umar, Muhammad
Maeng, Kiwan
Suh, G. Edward
Gupta, Udit
author_facet Shen, Michael
Umar, Muhammad
Maeng, Kiwan
Suh, G. Edward
Gupta, Udit
contents The rapid increase in the number of parameters in large language models (LLMs) has significantly increased the cost involved in fine-tuning and retraining LLMs, a necessity for keeping models up to date and improving accuracy. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) offers a promising approach to improving the capabilities and accuracy of LLMs without the necessity of retraining. Although RAG eliminates the need for continuous retraining to update model data, it incurs a trade-off in the form of slower model inference times. Resultingly, the use of RAG in enhancing the accuracy and capabilities of LLMs often involves diverse performance implications and trade-offs based on its design. In an effort to begin tackling and mitigating the performance penalties associated with RAG from a systems perspective, this paper introduces a detailed taxonomy and characterization of the different elements within the RAG ecosystem for LLMs that explore trade-offs within latency, throughput, and memory. Our study reveals underlying inefficiencies in RAG for systems deployment, that can result in TTFT latencies that are twice as long and unoptimized datastores that consume terabytes of storage.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_11854
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Understanding Systems Trade-offs in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Model Inference
Shen, Michael
Umar, Muhammad
Maeng, Kiwan
Suh, G. Edward
Gupta, Udit
Hardware Architecture
The rapid increase in the number of parameters in large language models (LLMs) has significantly increased the cost involved in fine-tuning and retraining LLMs, a necessity for keeping models up to date and improving accuracy. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) offers a promising approach to improving the capabilities and accuracy of LLMs without the necessity of retraining. Although RAG eliminates the need for continuous retraining to update model data, it incurs a trade-off in the form of slower model inference times. Resultingly, the use of RAG in enhancing the accuracy and capabilities of LLMs often involves diverse performance implications and trade-offs based on its design. In an effort to begin tackling and mitigating the performance penalties associated with RAG from a systems perspective, this paper introduces a detailed taxonomy and characterization of the different elements within the RAG ecosystem for LLMs that explore trade-offs within latency, throughput, and memory. Our study reveals underlying inefficiencies in RAG for systems deployment, that can result in TTFT latencies that are twice as long and unoptimized datastores that consume terabytes of storage.
title Towards Understanding Systems Trade-offs in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Model Inference
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.11854