# Keyword Matters: Unveiling the Energy Sensitivity of On-Device LLM Prompting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.22568 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22568/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [G-Eval: NLG Evaluation using GPT-4 with Better Human Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16634/) (2023)
- [Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17192/) (2022)
- [Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02243/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01910/) (2022)
- [Green AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10597/) (2019)
- [Estimating the Carbon Footprint of BLOOM, a 176B Parameter Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02001/) (2022)
- [Carbontracker: Tracking and Predicting the Carbon Footprint of Training Deep Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03051/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed on mobile and embedded devices to improve privacy and reduce network latency. Yet on-device inference faces a fundamental constraint: high energy consumption on battery-powered, resource-limited hardware. While model compression and runtime acceleration have been widely studied, the effect of prompt design on energy efficiency remains underexplored. This paper presents an empirical study of the relationship between prompt wording and energy consumption for on-device LLMs. Using real power measurements collected on a smartphone, we quantify how linguistic features, particularly imperative keywords and instruction structure, affect decoding length and total energy. Our results show consistent energy differences across verbs and tasks, indicating that prompt engineering is a lightweight lever for improving energy efficiency.