# JITServe: SLO-aware LLM Serving with Imprecise Request Information

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.20068 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20068/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 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 43 of its 78 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Apr 2025.

## 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, 30 of 43)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [s1: Simple test-time scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19393/) (2025)
- [SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07104/) (2023)
- [GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12983/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Models for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00515/) (2024)
- [DistServe: Disaggregating Prefill and Decoding for Goodput-optimized Large Language Model Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09670/) (2024)
- [Plan-and-Solve Prompting: Improving Zero-Shot Chain-of-Thought Reasoning by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04091/) (2023)
- [Splitwise: Efficient generative LLM inference using phase splitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18677/) (2023)
- [Taming Throughput-Latency Tradeoff in LLM Inference with Sarathi-Serve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02310/) (2024)
- [FlashAttention-3: Fast and Accurate Attention with Asynchrony and Low-precision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08608/) (2024)
- [LMSYS-Chat-1M: A Large-Scale Real-World LLM Conversation Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11998/) (2023)
- [DeepSpeed Inference: Enabling Efficient Inference of Transformer Models at Unprecedented Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00032/) (2022)
- [InfiniGen: Efficient Generative Inference of Large Language Models with Dynamic KV Cache Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19707/) (2024)
- [Llumnix: Dynamic Scheduling for Large Language Model Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03243/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Graph Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11835/) (2019)
- [Fast Distributed Inference Serving for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05920/) (2023)
- [Inference without Interference: Disaggregate LLM Inference for Mixed Downstream Workloads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11181/) (2024)
- [WebPilot: A Versatile and Autonomous Multi-Agent System for Web Task Execution with Strategic Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15978/) (2024)
- [Synthetic Data Generation with Large Language Models for Text Classification: Potential and Limitations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07849/) (2023)
- [Parrot: Efficient Serving of LLM-based Applications with Semantic Variable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19888/) (2024)
- [SpotServe: Serving Generative Large Language Models on Preemptible Instances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15566/) (2023)
- [Response Length Perception and Sequence Scheduling: An LLM-Empowered LLM Inference Pipeline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13144/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Prefill-Decode Aggregation or Disaggregation? Unifying Both for Goodput-Optimized LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01989/) (2025)
- [Taming the Titans: A Survey of Efficient LLM Inference Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19720/) (2025)
- [Agentic Coding in the Wild: Characterizing GitHub Copilot Traces at Production Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00101/) (2026)
- [PolyServe: Efficient Multi-SLO Serving at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17769/) (2025)
- [Characterization of Multi-Model Agentic AI Systems on General Tasks via Trace-Driven Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01725/) (2026)
- [PackInfer: Compute- and I/O-Efficient Attention for Batched LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06072/) (2026)
- [Scepsy: Serving Agentic Workflows Using Aggregate LLM Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15186/) (2026)
- [KAIROS: Stateful, Context-Aware Power-Efficient Agentic Inference Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16682/) (2026)
- [CacheFlow: Efficient LLM Serving with 3D-Parallel KV Cache Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25080/) (2026)
- [Cascade: Exploiting SLO-Aware latency budget for fair and high goodput LLM inference serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06557/) (2026)
- [SAGE: SLO-Aware Adaptive Retrieval for Production RAG Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.08237/) (2026)
- [LegoDiffusion: Micro-Serving Text-to-Image Diffusion Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08123/) (2026)
- [Lodestar: An Online-Learning LLM Inference Router](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00946/) (2026)
- [FlashDiff: Efficient Regional Execution and Scheduling for Diffusion Model Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12121/) (2026)
- [ServerlessT2I: Efficient Text-to-Image Workflow Serving on a Serverless Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.26566/) (2026)
- [Decoupling Readiness from Release for Tail-Aware Scheduling of Agentic LLM Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10964/) (2026)
- [REVA: Reusable Evidence View Aggregation for Context-Efficient RAG Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11209/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into applications ranging from interactive chatbots to multi-agent systems has introduced a wide spectrum of service-level objectives (SLOs) for responsiveness. These include latency-sensitive requests emphasizing per-token latency in streaming chat, deadline-sensitive requests requiring rapid full responses to trigger external tools, and compound requests with evolving dependencies across multiple LLM calls. Despite-or perhaps, because of-this workload diversity and unpredictable request information (e.g., response lengths and dependencies), existing request schedulers have focused on aggregate performance, unable to ensure application-level SLO needs. This paper presents JITServe, the first SLO-aware LLM serving system designed to maximize service goodput (e.g., the number of tokens meeting request SLOs) across diverse workloads. JITServe novelly schedules requests using imprecise request information and gradually relaxes this conservatism by refining request information estimates as generation progresses. It applies a grouped margin goodput maximization algorithm to allocate just enough serving bandwidth to satisfy each request's SLO just-in-time (JIT), maximizing residual capacity for others, while deciding the composition of requests in a batch to maximize efficiency and goodput with provable guarantees. Our evaluation across diverse realistic workloads, including chat, deep research, and agentic pipelines, shows that JITServe improves service goodput by 1.4x-6.3x, alternatively achieving 28.5%-83.2% resource savings, compared to state-of-the-art designs.
