University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Traditional serving runtimes require a dedicated warmup phase prior to processing user requests to prime GPU execution caches and allocators, incurring substantial startup delay on consumer edge devices. By contrast, cold-cache serving eliminates pre-warming entirely by construction. The engine begins serving the first incoming request immediately with an unpopulated, cold GPU expert cache. Initial expert requests naturally trigger cache misses that are processed directly by the standard decode miss path through concurrent PCIe cache fills and in-place CPU execution. As generation proceeds, the expert cache warms organically during ordinary inference without requiring synthetic warmup passes.

Cold-Cache Serving Without GPU Warmup

How does the GPU expert cache transition to a warm state in a cold-cache serving runtime?

What major performance penalty do traditional serving runtimes impose on consumer edge devices by requiring a dedicated GPU warmup phase?

Describe how a cold-cache serving engine handles initial expert requests when starting with an unpopulated GPU cache, detailing the specific execution and transfer mechanisms used.

In traditional serving runtimes, a dedicated warmup phase is used prior to processing user requests in order to prime GPU execution caches and allocators.

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