Inference Optimization: vLLM & PagedAttention Guide
Prerequisite: Familiarity with agent execution loops and memory storage examined in Part 7 — Agentic Memory Systems: Episodic & Working Storage. Review it first if needed. Answer-first: Serving large language models at enterprise scale bottlenecks on GPU VRAM capacity and severe KV cache fragmentation during high-concurrency workloads. Deploying vLLM with PagedAttention virtual memory mapping, prefix-sharing RadixAttention, speculative decoding draft models, and FP4/AWQ quantization doubles serving throughput while slashing P99 token generation latency by 58% on production clusters. ...