# SpecMoE: A Fast and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Inference via Self-Assisted Speculative Decoding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10152 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10152/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 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 43 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 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 / [Diffusion LLM and MoE inference](https://mlsanity.com/inference/diffusion-llm-and-moe-inference/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [Switch Transformers: Scaling to Trillion Parameter Models with Simple and Efficient Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03961/) (2021)
- [Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15556/) (2022)
- [HuggingFace's Transformers: State-of-the-art Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03771/) (2019)
- [Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03314/) (2024)
- [Mixtral of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04088/) (2024)
- [Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17192/) (2022)
- [GShard: Scaling Giant Models with Conditional Computation and Automatic Sharding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16668/) (2020)
- [GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models from Multi-Head Checkpoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13245/) (2023)
- [No Language Left Behind: Scaling Human-Centered Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04672/) (2022)
- [Get To The Point: Summarization with Pointer-Generator Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04368/) (2017)
- [Teaching Machines to Read and Comprehend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03340/) (2015)
- [Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01318/) (2023)
- [Medusa: Simple LLM Inference Acceleration Framework with Multiple Decoding Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10774/) (2024)
- [EAGLE: Speculative Sampling Requires Rethinking Feature Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15077/) (2024)
- [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)
- [DeepSpeed Inference: Enabling Efficient Inference of Transformer Models at Unprecedented Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00032/) (2022)
- [DeepSpeed-MoE: Advancing Mixture-of-Experts Inference and Training to Power Next-Generation AI Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05596/) (2022)
- [SpecInfer: Accelerating Generative Large Language Model Serving with Tree-based Speculative Inference and Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09781/) (2023)
- [ZeRO-Offload: Democratizing Billion-Scale Model Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06840/) (2021)
- [Blockwise Parallel Decoding for Deep Autoregressive Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03115/) (2018)
- [LayerSkip: Enabling Early Exit Inference and Self-Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16710/) (2024)
- [ZeRO-Infinity: Breaking the GPU Memory Wall for Extreme Scale Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07857/) (2021)
- [PowerInfer: Fast Large Language Model Serving with a Consumer-grade GPU](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12456/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [S2-MoE: Enabling Efficient Self-Speculative Decoding for Mixture-of-Experts on Edge Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15018/) (2026)
- [The Limits of Speculation: Bounding Speculative Decoding in Mixture-of-Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22156/) (2026)
- [BigMoMo: Efficient Inference of Large-Scale MoE with Speculative Decoding on Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14643/) (2026)
- [Cascadia: Resident 975B MoE Inference on Eleven AI PCs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07219/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture has emerged as a promising approach to mitigate the rising computational costs of large language models (LLMs) by selectively activating parameters. However, its high memory requirements and sub-optimal parameter efficiency pose significant challenges for efficient deployment. Although CPU-offloaded MoE inference systems have been proposed in the literature, they offer limited efficiency, particularly for large batch sizes. In this work, we propose SpecMoE, a memory-efficient MoE inference system based on our self-assisted speculative decoding algorithm. SpecMoE demonstrates the effectiveness of applying speculative decoding to MoE inference without requiring additional model training or fine-tuning. Our system improves inference throughput by up to 4.30×, while significantly reducing bandwidth requirements of both memory and interconnect on memory-constrained systems.