Equation 2 · Part 3 · The Real Economics of Shipping a Model to a Device

Symbol Q

TC_{\mathrm{teacher}} = Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{teacher}}.

Q

What this part means

the number of queries served over the deployment’s life, and $c_{\mathrm{student}}$ .

Its job in the formula

Q is one factor in the product that computes the quantity on the left.

Full expressionSymbol QArticle meaning

Where the article explains it

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

The passage around this formula

against the cost of simply continuing to serve the teacher directly for the same query volume, $TC_{\mathrm{teacher}} = Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{teacher}}$ . Here $C_{\mathrm{distill}}$ is the one-time training cost, Q is the number of queries served over the deployment’s life, and $c_{\mathrm{student}}$ and $c_{\mathrm{teacher}}$ are the marginal cost per query of serving each model, wherever that serving happens. The break-even query volume is

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Learn the underlying idea

A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

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Sources cited in the article section

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