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Equation 1 · Part 2 · The Real Economics of Shipping a Model to a Device

Symbol C_distill

TCdistill=Cdistill+Q⋅cstudent,TC_{\mathrm{distill}} = C_{\mathrm{distill}} + Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{student}},
CdistillC_{\mathrm{distill}}

What this part means

the one-time training cost.

Its job in the formula

CdC_distill is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.

Where the article explains it

Here CdistillC_{\mathrm{distill}} is the one-time training cost, Q is the number of queries served over the deployment’s life, and cstudentc_{\mathrm{student}} and cteacherc_{\mathrm{teacher}} are the marginal cost per query of serving each model, wherever that serving happens.

The passage around this formula

That gap explains why distillation investment almost never fails its own break-even test once a product actually ships. Write the total cost of training and then serving a distilled student model as TCdistill=Cdistill+Q⋅cstudentTC_{\mathrm{distill}} = C_{\mathrm{distill}} + Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{student}}. against the cost of simply continuing to serve the teacher directly for the same query volume,

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Learn the underlying idea

A subscript is a label attached below a symbol. It often selects a time step, component, category, or member of a sequence.

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Sources cited in the article section

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