Prompt Cache: Modular Attention Reuse for Low-Latency Inference
Authors: name: In Gim; name: Guojun Chen; name: Seung-seob Lee; name: Nikhil Sarda; name: Anurag Khandelwal; name: Lin Zhong
Published: 2023-11-07 18:17:05

Abstract: We present Prompt Cache, an approach for accelerating inference for large
language models (LLM) by reusing attention states across different LLM prompts.
Many input prompts have overlapping text segments, such as system messages,
prompt templates, and documents provided for context. Our key insight is that
by precomputing and storing the attention states of these frequently occurring
text segments on the inference server, we can efficiently reuse them when these
segments appear in user prompts. Prompt Cache employs a schema to explicitly
define such reusable text segments, called prompt modules. The schema ensures
positional accuracy during attention state reuse and provides users with an
interface to access cached states in their prompt. Using a prototype
implementation, we evaluate Prompt Cache across several LLMs. We show that
Prompt Cache significantly reduce latency in time-to-first-token, especially
for longer prompts such as document-based question answering and
recommendations. The improvements range from 8x for GPU-based inference to 60x
for CPU-based inference, all while maintaining output accuracy and without the
need for model parameter modifications.