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Equation 13 · Part 8 · Serving a Frontier Model: The KV Cache, Batching, and What a Token Actually Costs

subtraction

bmax⁡≈Mdevice−MweightsMkv(s),b_{\max} \approx \frac{M_{\mathrm{device}} - M_{\mathrm{weights}}}{M_{\mathrm{kv}}(s)} ,
subtraction

What this part means

Subtract the following term or group from the preceding one. A leading minus marks a negative quantity.

Its job in the formula

Subtract the following term or group from the preceding one. A leading minus marks a negative quantity.

The passage around this formula

What binds is memory, and specifically the cache. Weights are shared across the batch; the key–value cache is not. Each concurrent request carries its own, and each grows with every token it generates. Achievable batch size is therefore bmax⁡≈Mdevice−MweightsMkv(s)b_{\max} \approx \frac{M_{\mathrm{device}} - M_{\mathrm{weights}}}{M_{\mathrm{kv}}(s)} . which falls as contexts lengthen. This is the mechanism behind an effect users notice without explanation: long-context workloads cost disproportionately more, because they crowd out the concurrency that made short-context serving cheap.

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Learn the underlying idea

Addition combines quantities; subtraction measures the signed difference between them. Parentheses show what is combined before the rest of the expression is evaluated.

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Sources cited in the article section

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