# From Inference Engine to Inference Control Plane: Connecting vLLM, llm-d, and the Evolution of Efficient Distributed LLM Serving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23130 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23130/

## 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 13 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Serving systems and request scheduling](https://mlsanity.com/inference/serving-systems-and-request-scheduling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [DistServe: Disaggregating Prefill and Decoding for Goodput-optimized Large Language Model Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09670/) (2024)
- [Splitwise: Efficient generative LLM inference using phase splitting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18677/) (2023)
- [Taming Throughput-Latency Tradeoff in LLM Inference with Sarathi-Serve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02310/) (2024)
- [FlashAttention-3: Fast and Accurate Attention with Asynchrony and Low-precision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08608/) (2024)
- [MInference 1.0: Accelerating Pre-filling for Long-Context LLMs via Dynamic Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02490/) (2024)
- [Mooncake: A KVCache-centric Disaggregated Architecture for LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00079/) (2024)
- [Llumnix: Dynamic Scheduling for Large Language Model Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03243/) (2024)
- [DynamoLLM: Designing LLM Inference Clusters for Performance and Energy Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00741/) (2024)
- [Preble: Efficient Distributed Prompt Scheduling for LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00023/) (2024)
- [MemServe: Context Caching for Disaggregated LLM Serving with Elastic Memory Pool](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17565/) (2024)
- [Energy Considerations of Large Language Model Inference and Efficiency Optimizations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17674/) (2025)
- [M*: A Modular, Extensible, Serving System for Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12688/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language model (LLM) inference is evolving from an engine-local optimization problem into a distributed control problem involving reusable state, phase placement, heterogeneous accelerators, networking, autoscaling, reliability, and service-level objectives. This paper connects that transition across peer-reviewed systems research, open-source implementations, and documented production studies. It treats vLLM and llm-d as complementary layers: model-serving engines optimize execution through mechanisms such as PagedAttention, continuous batching, kernels, quantization, and parallelism, while an inference control plane can optimize where, when, and under what policy execution occurs across a fleet. The contribution is synthesis rather than a new benchmark; all reported performance and deployment results remain attributed to their original sources. The combined evidence suggests that the scarce resource in modern inference is shifting from raw FLOPs alone toward managed state, placement, network movement, reliability, and decision quality. We propose an Inference Execution Planner that selects feasible execution plans rather than only endpoints, including aggregated versus disaggregated topology, KV source and transfer action, hardware variant, routing/admission policy, and slower scaling decisions. We also provide a source-local benchmark atlas, a bottleneck-migration taxonomy, practical deployment guidance, an evaluation framework based on SLO-goodput, and research questions for agentic, multimodal, heterogeneous, and resilient inference.