Vortex: Bridging Extreme Compression and Efficient LLM Inference
On the map: Efficient LLM inference and serving → Serving systems and request scheduling
Abstract (arXiv)
Extreme compression techniques, including vector quantization (VQ) and input-dependent sparsity, can significantly reduce the memory footprint of large language models (LLMs). However, a key challenge remains in translating such compression into practical efficiency. On conventional systolic-array-based accelerators, VQ incurs high dequantization overhead, while the irregular patterns of input-dependent sparsity are difficult to exploit. In this study, we address these challenges with Vortex, an architecture compatible with systolic-array-based accelerators with minimal hardware overhead, bridging the gap between extreme compression and efficient inference. Vortex adopts a bi-flow execution strategy that efficiently supports vector-quantized models across both prefill and decoding workloads, and we further optimize it through systematic design space exploration. On the algorithm side, we propose codebook-wise contextual sparsity to align with VQ execution. Across end-to-end workloads, Vortex achieves 8.03×--23.7× speedup and 5.68×--12.5× energy reduction over state-of-the-art accelerators.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (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 67 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2026.
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43 of 67 references.
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Other references · 41
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