# KAP: Bridging the Knowledge Selection-Runtime Consumption Gap in LLM Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24260 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24260/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Efficient reasoning and agent inference, one of 12 directions in Efficient LLM inference and serving.
- Builds on 37 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Efficient reasoning and agent inference](https://mlsanity.com/inference/efficient-reasoning-and-agent-inference/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17453/) (2023)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17192/) (2022)
- [From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16130/) (2024)
- [Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04426/) (2021)
- [Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01282/) (2020)
- [SGLang: Efficient Execution of Structured Language Model Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07104/) (2023)
- [Accelerating Large Language Model Decoding with Speculative Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01318/) (2023)
- [SnapKV: LLM Knows What You are Looking for Before Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14469/) (2024)
- [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)
- [Efficiently Scaling Transformer Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05102/) (2022)
- [Quest: Query-Aware Sparsity for Efficient Long-Context LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10774/) (2024)
- [LongLLMLingua: Accelerating and Enhancing LLMs in Long Context Scenarios via Prompt Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06839/) (2023)
- [PyramidKV: Dynamic KV Cache Compression based on Pyramidal Information Funneling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02069/) (2024)
- [DeepSpeed Inference: Enabling Efficient Inference of Transformer Models at Unprecedented Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00032/) (2022)
- [MInference 1.0: Accelerating Pre-filling for Long-Context LLMs via Dynamic Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02490/) (2024)
- [LayerSkip: Enabling Early Exit Inference and Self-Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16710/) (2024)
- [Break the Sequential Dependency of LLM Inference Using Lookahead Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02057/) (2024)
- [CacheBlend: Fast Large Language Model Serving for RAG with Cached Knowledge Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16444/) (2024)
- [Compressing Context to Enhance Inference Efficiency of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06201/) (2023)
- [Answering Complex Open-Domain Questions with Multi-Hop Dense Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12756/) (2020)
- [TriForce: Lossless Acceleration of Long Sequence Generation with Hierarchical Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11912/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Modern LLM systems increasingly rely on knowledge-selection processes that produce high-value structured priors, such as ranked evidence, graph topology, multimodal alignment, and confidence signals. Yet LLM serving remains fundamentally oblivious to this rich structure: once such signals are serialized into a prompt, the backend observes only a flat token sequence, forcing dense and uniform consumption of the full key-value (KV) state during decoding. We term this architectural mismatch the Knowledge Selection-Runtime Consumption (KSRC) gap: richer contexts enlarge the full-prompt KV footprint and decode-time memory traffic, increasing latency and degrading throughput even when reasoning depends on only a small fraction of the context. To bridge the gap, we propose Knowledge Access Planning (KAP), a paradigm-shifting execution abstraction that elevates structured knowledge priors from passive prompt-construction hints into first-class physical execution artifacts. KAP establishes a universal intermediate representation (IR)-the runtime access plan-which compiles structured knowledge signals to govern physical KV access without altering logical prompt semantics, model weights, or training procedures. Through this IR, KAP shifts LLM serving from token-aware context consumption to plan-driven, knowledge-aware runtime consumption. We instantiate KAP with GraphSpec, a compiler-executor realization connecting structured knowledge selection to an LLM serving backend. We derive a phase-boundary model for the positive-speedup regime of plan-guided execution. Across 4K-128K long-context QA workloads, GraphSpec maintains answer quality comparable to full-context decoding while decoupling physical KV consumption from prompt length, reducing proposal-time KV access to 5.5% of source KV state at 128K, and fundamentally shifting the scaling trajectory of long-context generation.