What is inference latency?

Definition

Artificial intelligence inference latency measures how long a model takes to respond during use. Teams may track time to first token, time per generated token or total completion time depending on the application.

Latency depends on model size, quantization, active parameters, context length, hardware, memory bandwidth and software. A smaller quantization can be faster, but implementation and hardware support determine the actual result.

Acronyms and aliases

model response latency synonymAI inference latency variantartificial intelligence inference latency variant

Frequently asked questions

What affects AI inference latency?

Model architecture, precision, active parameters, context, output length, hardware, memory bandwidth and software all affect it.

Does lower-bit quantization always reduce latency?

No. It often helps, but unsupported kernels, conversion overhead or hardware characteristics can limit the speedup.

Videos explaining inference latency

  1. Ornith 1.5 35B Q4 vs Q8
    Bijan Bowen31:401 VIEW