# Multi-Layer Scheduling for MoE-Based LLM Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21626 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21626/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Efficient MoE training and inference systems, one of 12 directions in Mixture-of-experts.
- Builds on 21 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- Mixture-of-experts / [Efficient MoE training and inference systems](https://mlsanity.com/moe/efficient-moe-training-and-inference-systems/)
- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Serving systems and request scheduling](https://mlsanity.com/inference/serving-systems-and-request-scheduling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Switch Transformers: Scaling to Trillion Parameter Models with Simple and Efficient Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03961/) (2021)
- [Mixtral of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04088/) (2024)
- [SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07104/) (2023)
- [Fast Distributed Inference Serving for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05920/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Efficient Interactive LLM Serving with Proxy Model-based Sequence Length Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08509/) (2024)
- [Exploiting Inter-Layer Expert Affinity for Accelerating Mixture-of-Experts Model Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08383/) (2024)
- [MoETuner: Optimized Mixture of Expert Serving with Balanced Expert Placement and Token Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06643/) (2025)
- [BLITZSCALE: Fast and Live Large Model Autoscaling with O(1) Host Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17246/) (2024)
- [Oaken: Fast and Efficient LLM Serving with Online-Offline Hybrid KV Cache Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18599/) (2025)
- [Fast Inference for Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18248/) (2024)
- [FlexPipe: Adapting Dynamic LLM Serving Through Inflight Pipeline Refactoring in Fragmented Serverless Clusters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11938/) (2025)
- [SeaLLM: Service-Aware and Latency-Optimized Resource Sharing for Large Language Model Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15720/) (2025)
- [Priority-Aware Preemptive Scheduling for Mixed-Priority Workloads in MoE Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09304/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Cost-Aware Mixture-of-Experts Coordination for Model Markets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11908/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success across a wide range of tasks, but serving them efficiently at scale remains a critical challenge due to their substantial computational and latency demands. While most existing inference frameworks rely on simple scheduling strategies such as First-Come-First-Serve (FCFS) at the engine level and Round-Robin (RR) at the scheduler or coordinator level, they often fail to fully utilize system resources and may suffer from issues such as head-of-line blocking and load imbalance. Recent advances in Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models have also introduced new challenges in scheduling arising from expert parallelism and routing complexity. This research proposes a multi-layer scheduling framework tailored for MoE-based LLM serving. It targets scheduling at three levels: request-level, enginelevel, and expert-level. At the request level, we explore algorithms such as Shortest-Job-First (SJF) and priority-aware aging to improve throughput and reduce latency. At the engine level, we design load-aware dispatching strategies that account for the current prefix token load, KV cache utilization, and user stickiness to achieve better resource matching. At the expert level, we focus on alleviating expert hotspots and strategically placing inter-layer expert dependencies to balance load and improve routing efficiency. Extensive experimental results from more than 100 experiments conducted under diverse workload distributions show that our approach consistently outperforms the state-of-theart inference framework vLLM, achieving up to 17.8% reduction in Time To First Token (TTFT) latency and 13.3% reduction in Time-Per-Output-Token (TPOT) latency.