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Equation 2 · Part 5 · The Real Economics of Shipping a Model to a Device

=

TCteacher=Q⋅cteacher.TC_{\mathrm{teacher}} = Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{teacher}}.
=

What this part means

The expressions on both sides represent the same quantity under the stated assumptions.

Its job in the formula

The equals sign connects the complete expression on the left with the complete expression on the right. Both sides must have compatible units.

The passage around this formula

against the cost of simply continuing to serve the teacher directly for the same query volume, TCteacher=Q⋅cteacherTC_{\mathrm{teacher}} = Q \cdot c_{\mathrm{teacher}}. 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 break-even query volume is

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Learn the underlying idea

An equals sign says that the expression on its left and the expression on its right have the same value under the stated definitions and assumptions.

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Sources cited in the article section

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