# DistServe: Disaggregating Prefill and Decoding for Goodput-optimized Large Language Model Serving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09670 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09670/

## Key facts

- Cited by 617 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Serving systems and request scheduling, one of 12 directions in Efficient LLM inference and serving.
- Builds on 18 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jan 2024.

## Placed in

- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Serving systems and request scheduling](https://mlsanity.com/inference/serving-systems-and-request-scheduling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using Model Parallelism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08053/) (2019)
- [GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models from Multi-Head Checkpoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13245/) (2023)
- [ZeRO: Memory Optimizations Toward Training Trillion Parameter Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02054/) (2019)
- [Fast Transformer Decoding: One Write-Head is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02150/) (2019)
- [FlexGen: High-Throughput Generative Inference of Large Language Models with a Single GPU](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06865/) (2023)
- [Splitwise: Efficient generative LLM inference using phase splitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18677/) (2023)
- [Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05889/) (2017)
- [PowerInfer: Fast Large Language Model Serving with a Consumer-grade GPU](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12456/) (2023)
- [Fast Distributed Inference Serving for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05920/) (2023)
- [Serving DNNs like Clockwork: Performance Predictability from the Bottom Up](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02464/) (2020)
- [Pollux: Co-adaptive Cluster Scheduling for Goodput-Optimized Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12260/) (2020)
- [TurboTransformers: An Efficient GPU Serving System For Transformer Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.05680/) (2020)
- [FT-CNN: Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12203/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 617)

- [HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19256/) (2024)
- [CacheBlend: Fast Large Language Model Serving for RAG with Cached Knowledge Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16444/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Efficient Inference for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14294/) (2024)
- [Mooncake: A KVCache-centric Disaggregated Architecture for LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00079/) (2024)
- [dKV-Cache: The Cache for Diffusion Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15781/) (2025)
- [From Decoding to Meta-Generation: Inference-time Algorithms for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16838/) (2024)
- [Mixture-of-Recursions: Learning Dynamic Recursive Depths for Adaptive Token-Level Computation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10524/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Efficient Reasoning for Large Reasoning Models: Language, Multimodality, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21614/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model Acceleration based on KV Cache Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19442/) (2024)
- [LMCache: An Efficient KV Cache Layer for Enterprise-Scale LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09665/) (2025)
- [Vidur: A Large-Scale Simulation Framework For LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05465/) (2024)
- [RetrievalAttention: Accelerating Long-Context LLM Inference via Vector Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10516/) (2024)
- [LoongServe: Efficiently Serving Long-Context Large Language Models with Elastic Sequence Parallelism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09526/) (2024)
- [Parrot: Efficient Serving of LLM-based Applications with Semantic Variable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19888/) (2024)
- [RAGCache: Efficient Knowledge Caching for Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12457/) (2024)
- [vAttention: Dynamic Memory Management for Serving LLMs without PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04437/) (2024)
- [PQCache: Product Quantization-based KVCache for Long Context LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12820/) (2024)
- [NanoFlow: Towards Optimal Large Language Model Serving Throughput](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12757/) (2024)
- [BurstGPT: A Real-world Workload Dataset to Optimize LLM Serving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17644/) (2024)
- [Efficient LLM Scheduling by Learning to Rank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15792/) (2024)
- [Preble: Efficient Distributed Prompt Scheduling for LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00023/) (2024)
- [MemServe: Context Caching for Disaggregated LLM Serving with Elastic Memory Pool](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17565/) (2024)
- [Fast On-device LLM Inference with NPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05858/) (2024)
- [Efficiently Scaling LLM Reasoning with Certaindex](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20993/) (2024)
- [Helix: Serving Large Language Models over Heterogeneous GPUs and Network via Max-Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01566/) (2024)
- [Step-3 is Large yet Affordable: Model-system Co-design for Cost-effective Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19427/) (2025)
- [The Best Instruction-Tuning Data are Those That Fit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04194/) (2025)
- [POD-Attention: Unlocking Full Prefill-Decode Overlap for Faster LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18038/) (2024)
- [LLM Inference Serving: Survey of Recent Advances and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12391/) (2024)
- [Andes: Defining and Enhancing Quality-of-Experience in LLM-Based Text Streaming Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16283/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

DistServe improves the performance of large language models (LLMs) serving by disaggregating the prefill and decoding computation. Existing LLM serving systems colocate the two phases and batch the computation of prefill and decoding across all users and requests. We find that this strategy not only leads to strong prefill-decoding interferences but also couples the resource allocation and parallelism plans for both phases. LLM applications often emphasize individual latency for each phase: time to first token (TTFT) for the prefill phase and time per output token (TPOT) of each request for the decoding phase. In the presence of stringent latency requirements, existing systems have to prioritize one latency over the other, or over-provision compute resources to meet both. DistServe assigns prefill and decoding computation to different GPUs, hence eliminating prefill-decoding interferences. Given the application's TTFT and TPOT requirements, DistServe co-optimizes the resource allocation and parallelism strategy tailored for each phase. DistServe also places the two phases according to the serving cluster's bandwidth to minimize the communication caused by disaggregation. As a result, DistServe significantly improves LLM serving performance in terms of the maximum rate that can be served within both TTFT and TPOT constraints on each GPU. Our evaluations show that on various popular LLMs, applications, and latency requirements, DistServe can serve 7.4x more requests or 12.6x tighter SLO, compared to state-of-the-art systems, while staying within latency constraints for > 90% of requests.