SLED: A Speculative LLM Decoding Framework for Efficient Edge Serving

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Li, Xiangchen, Spatharakis, Dimitrios, Ghafouri, Saeid, Fan, Jiakun, Vandierendonck, Hans, John, Deepu, Ji, Bo, Nikolopoulos, Dimitrios
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Li, Xiangchen
Spatharakis, Dimitrios
Ghafouri, Saeid
Fan, Jiakun
Vandierendonck, Hans
John, Deepu
Ji, Bo
Nikolopoulos, Dimitrios
author_facet Li, Xiangchen
Spatharakis, Dimitrios
Ghafouri, Saeid
Fan, Jiakun
Vandierendonck, Hans
John, Deepu
Ji, Bo
Nikolopoulos, Dimitrios
contents The growing gap between the increasing complexity of large language models (LLMs) and the limited computational budgets of edge devices poses a key challenge for efficient on-device inference, despite gradual improvements in hardware capabilities. Existing strategies, such as aggressive quantization, pruning, or remote inference, trade accuracy for efficiency or lead to substantial cost burdens. This position paper introduces a new framework that leverages speculative decoding, previously viewed primarily as a decoding acceleration technique for autoregressive generation of LLMs, as a promising approach specifically adapted for edge computing by orchestrating computation across heterogeneous devices. We propose \acronym, a framework that allows lightweight edge devices to draft multiple candidate tokens locally using diverse draft models, while a single, shared edge server verifies the tokens utilizing a more precise target model. To further increase the efficiency of verification, the edge server batch the diverse verification requests from devices. This approach supports device heterogeneity and reduces server-side memory footprint by sharing the same upstream target model across multiple devices. Our initial experiments with Jetson Orin Nano, Raspberry Pi 4B/5, and an edge server equipped with 4 Nvidia A100 GPUs indicate substantial benefits: 2.2 more system throughput, 2.8 more system capacity, and better cost efficiency, all without sacrificing model accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09397
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SLED: A Speculative LLM Decoding Framework for Efficient Edge Serving
Li, Xiangchen
Spatharakis, Dimitrios
Ghafouri, Saeid
Fan, Jiakun
Vandierendonck, Hans
John, Deepu
Ji, Bo
Nikolopoulos, Dimitrios
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
68T07, 68M14
I.2.6; C.2.4; C.1.4
The growing gap between the increasing complexity of large language models (LLMs) and the limited computational budgets of edge devices poses a key challenge for efficient on-device inference, despite gradual improvements in hardware capabilities. Existing strategies, such as aggressive quantization, pruning, or remote inference, trade accuracy for efficiency or lead to substantial cost burdens. This position paper introduces a new framework that leverages speculative decoding, previously viewed primarily as a decoding acceleration technique for autoregressive generation of LLMs, as a promising approach specifically adapted for edge computing by orchestrating computation across heterogeneous devices. We propose \acronym, a framework that allows lightweight edge devices to draft multiple candidate tokens locally using diverse draft models, while a single, shared edge server verifies the tokens utilizing a more precise target model. To further increase the efficiency of verification, the edge server batch the diverse verification requests from devices. This approach supports device heterogeneity and reduces server-side memory footprint by sharing the same upstream target model across multiple devices. Our initial experiments with Jetson Orin Nano, Raspberry Pi 4B/5, and an edge server equipped with 4 Nvidia A100 GPUs indicate substantial benefits: 2.2 more system throughput, 2.8 more system capacity, and better cost efficiency, all without sacrificing model accuracy.
title SLED: A Speculative LLM Decoding Framework for Efficient Edge Serving
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
68T07, 68M14
I.2.6; C.2.4; C.1.4
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09397