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Autori principali: He, Minghua, Zhang, Lingzhe, Liu, Yuan, Zhou, Xiao, Liu, Aiwei
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30851
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author He, Minghua
Zhang, Lingzhe
Liu, Yuan
Zhou, Xiao
Liu, Aiwei
author_facet He, Minghua
Zhang, Lingzhe
Liu, Yuan
Zhou, Xiao
Liu, Aiwei
contents Parallel decoding improves generation efficiency by processing multiple decode positions within a single decode forward, but reported speedups conflate algorithmic token utilization with the system cost of executing multiple positions. We isolate the system side by introducing Near-Free Parallelism (NFP), the maximum number of positions executable at near-free latency. Analyzing Dense FFNs, MoE FFNs, and Attention against an idle-compute baseline, we find that NFP is shaped not by memory-bound resource slack alone, but also by implementation-induced kernel-granularity slack. Based on these mechanisms, we establish a Near-Free Parallelism principle that predicts the NFP boundary from hardware balance and implementation granularity. Validation on representative Dense and MoE models -- spanning both diffusion and autoregressive decoding -- shows that the principle accurately predicts practical NFP boundaries, revealing that the standard idle-compute intuition can over-predict by up to 23x -- offering a system-side budget for parallelism selection and model-system co-design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_30851
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How Much Parallelism Is "Free"? A Principle of Near-Free Parallelism for Parallel Decoding
He, Minghua
Zhang, Lingzhe
Liu, Yuan
Zhou, Xiao
Liu, Aiwei
Performance
Parallel decoding improves generation efficiency by processing multiple decode positions within a single decode forward, but reported speedups conflate algorithmic token utilization with the system cost of executing multiple positions. We isolate the system side by introducing Near-Free Parallelism (NFP), the maximum number of positions executable at near-free latency. Analyzing Dense FFNs, MoE FFNs, and Attention against an idle-compute baseline, we find that NFP is shaped not by memory-bound resource slack alone, but also by implementation-induced kernel-granularity slack. Based on these mechanisms, we establish a Near-Free Parallelism principle that predicts the NFP boundary from hardware balance and implementation granularity. Validation on representative Dense and MoE models -- spanning both diffusion and autoregressive decoding -- shows that the principle accurately predicts practical NFP boundaries, revealing that the standard idle-compute intuition can over-predict by up to 23x -- offering a system-side budget for parallelism selection and model-system co-design.
title How Much Parallelism Is "Free"? A Principle of Near-Free Parallelism for Parallel Decoding
topic Performance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30851