ultimate guide to PagedAttention
PagedAttention is a GPU memory management technique that improves efficiency during large language model (LLM) inference. It works by dividing the Key-Value (KV) cache into smaller, reusable memory pages instead of reserving large, contiguous memory blocks. This method reduces memory waste, fragmentation, and operational costs while enabling faster and more scalable inference. PagedAttention is particularly useful for handling dynamic tasks, large context windows, and advanced scenarios like beam search or parallel sampling. It’s a practical solution for improving LLM performance without requiring expensive hardware upgrades. The Key-Value cache is a cornerstone of how transformer-based LLMs handle text efficiently. When generating text, these models rely on previously processed tokens to maintain context and coherence. Without a KV cache, the model would have to repeatedly recalculate attention weights for every token, which would be computationally expensive.