KV Cache Compression for Inference Efficiency in LLMs: A Review

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Liu, Yanyu, Fu, Jingying, Liu, Sixiang, Zou, Yitian, Fu, You, Zhou, Jiehan, Zhang, Shouhua
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866915434777804800
author Liu, Yanyu
Fu, Jingying
Liu, Sixiang
Zou, Yitian
Fu, You
Zhou, Jiehan
Zhang, Shouhua
author_facet Liu, Yanyu
Fu, Jingying
Liu, Sixiang
Zou, Yitian
Fu, You
Zhou, Jiehan
Zhang, Shouhua
contents Withtherapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), the context length for inference has been continuously increasing, leading to an exponential growth in the demand for Key-Value (KV) caching. This has resulted in a significant memory bottleneck, limiting the inference efficiency and scalability of the models. Therefore, optimizing the KV cache during inference is crucial for enhancing performance and efficiency. This review systematically examines current KV cache optimization techniques, including compression strategies such as selective token strategies, quantization, and attention compression. We evaluate the effectiveness, trade-offs, and application scenarios of these methods, providing a comprehensive analysis of their impact on memory usage and inference speed. We focus on identifying the limitations and challenges of existing methods, such as compatibility issues with different models and tasks. Additionally, this review highlights future research directions, including hybrid optimization techniques, adaptive dynamic strategies, and software-hardware co-design. These approaches aim to improve inference efficiency and promote the practical application of large language models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_06297
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle KV Cache Compression for Inference Efficiency in LLMs: A Review
Liu, Yanyu
Fu, Jingying
Liu, Sixiang
Zou, Yitian
Fu, You
Zhou, Jiehan
Zhang, Shouhua
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Withtherapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), the context length for inference has been continuously increasing, leading to an exponential growth in the demand for Key-Value (KV) caching. This has resulted in a significant memory bottleneck, limiting the inference efficiency and scalability of the models. Therefore, optimizing the KV cache during inference is crucial for enhancing performance and efficiency. This review systematically examines current KV cache optimization techniques, including compression strategies such as selective token strategies, quantization, and attention compression. We evaluate the effectiveness, trade-offs, and application scenarios of these methods, providing a comprehensive analysis of their impact on memory usage and inference speed. We focus on identifying the limitations and challenges of existing methods, such as compatibility issues with different models and tasks. Additionally, this review highlights future research directions, including hybrid optimization techniques, adaptive dynamic strategies, and software-hardware co-design. These approaches aim to improve inference efficiency and promote the practical application of large language models.
title KV Cache Compression for Inference Efficiency in LLMs: A Review
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06297