Threshold-Based Exclusive Batching for LLM Inference

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhang, Weifang, Nie, Yuzhou, Pang, Bowen, Ma, Guangrui, Wu, Shining
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Zhang, Weifang
Nie, Yuzhou
Pang, Bowen
Ma, Guangrui
Wu, Shining
author_facet Zhang, Weifang
Nie, Yuzhou
Pang, Bowen
Ma, Guangrui
Wu, Shining
contents Mixed batching (MB)--interleaving prefill and decode in a single batch--has become the standard scheduling strategy for large language model (LLM) inference due to its efficiency in maximizing compute and memory utilization. However, through controlled experiments, we find that prefill-decode interference inflates MB's per-step marginal cost above that of pure decode. On the high-bandwidth H200 (4.8 TB/s), this occurs only when decode tokens exceed 80% of the batch; however, on the bandwidth-constrained RTX PRO 6000 (1.792 TB/s), this threshold plummets to just 20%. Consequently, the optimal choice between MB and exclusive batching (EB) fundamentally depends on GPU memory bandwidth, model size, and workload composition. We derive a closed-form condition for this EB-MB performance crossover, along with asymptotically optimal phase-switching thresholds and memory-safe batch sizing for EB. Optimized EB achieves up to 41.9% higher throughput on bandwidth-constrained GPUs, while MB retains its advantage on high-bandwidth hardware with larger models. Our hybrid scheduler EB+ applies this condition online to dynamically switch between EB and MB without manual intervention. Under non-stationary traffic with distribution or concurrency shifts, EB+ attains the highest or near-highest throughput in every setting, outperforming MB by up to 36.4%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_00516
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Threshold-Based Exclusive Batching for LLM Inference
Zhang, Weifang
Nie, Yuzhou
Pang, Bowen
Ma, Guangrui
Wu, Shining
Artificial Intelligence
Mixed batching (MB)--interleaving prefill and decode in a single batch--has become the standard scheduling strategy for large language model (LLM) inference due to its efficiency in maximizing compute and memory utilization. However, through controlled experiments, we find that prefill-decode interference inflates MB's per-step marginal cost above that of pure decode. On the high-bandwidth H200 (4.8 TB/s), this occurs only when decode tokens exceed 80% of the batch; however, on the bandwidth-constrained RTX PRO 6000 (1.792 TB/s), this threshold plummets to just 20%. Consequently, the optimal choice between MB and exclusive batching (EB) fundamentally depends on GPU memory bandwidth, model size, and workload composition. We derive a closed-form condition for this EB-MB performance crossover, along with asymptotically optimal phase-switching thresholds and memory-safe batch sizing for EB. Optimized EB achieves up to 41.9% higher throughput on bandwidth-constrained GPUs, while MB retains its advantage on high-bandwidth hardware with larger models. Our hybrid scheduler EB+ applies this condition online to dynamically switch between EB and MB without manual intervention. Under non-stationary traffic with distribution or concurrency shifts, EB+ attains the highest or near-highest throughput in every setting, outperforming MB by up to 36.4%.
title Threshold-Based Exclusive Batching for LLM Inference
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00516