arXiv Computation and Language

PELM: Power Efficient On-Device LLM Inference with Speculative Decoding and Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 24

EnerInfer: Energy-Aware On-Device LLM Inference

arXiv:2606. 23001v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On-device LLM inference is increasingly attractive for privacy-preserving, reliable, and cost-effective deployment, yet its energy and thermal costs remain a critical bottleneck.

By Bohua Zou, Nian Liu, Binqi Sun, Matteo Mascherin, Debayan Roy, Yutao Liu, Yu Peng, Ning Jia, Haibo Chen
arXiv AI
Jul 24

Profiling Lightweight Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 20806v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Lightweight large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being deployed locally on personal computers and are expected to play a growing role in resource-constrained edge and mobile environments.

By Tomohiro Harada, Enrique Alba, Gabriel Luque
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

The Battery Price of edge AI: A study of the Environmental Impact of LLM Inference on Mobile Devices

The paper investigates the environmental impact of running large language models (LLMs) on mobile devices. It evaluates 18 different LLM configurations on two smartphones and a server, measuring energy per token, latency, accuracy, and battery-cycle consumption. Findings reveal that on-device inference is about three times less energy‑efficient than batched server inference, that energy consumption varies non‑monotonically with quantization bit‑width, and that most models are not on the Pareto front of accuracy and energy efficiency. The study concludes that local AI is not inherently more sustainable than cloud inference, with the majority of environmental impact stemming from device embodied carbon.

By \'Edouard Gu\'egain, Tristan Coignion
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 3

How Do Prompt Variations Affect Energy Consumption in On-Device LLMs?

The paper investigates how prompt design influences energy consumption in on-device large language models (LLMs). It examines two prompt properties—cognitive load and phrasing pattern—across various datasets, models, and devices, using phase-level profiling to separate prefill and decode energy. Findings show that cognitive load mainly affects energy per token, while phrasing pattern influences energy mainly through token usage, and that prompt design reshapes the energy-quality trade‑off differently for each model.

By Wei Hu, Xiaolong Tu, Dawei Chen, Yitao Chen, Kyungtae Han, Haoxin Wang
arXiv Machine Learning
6d ago

Evaluating the Applicability of LLM Inference Optimizations on Apple Silicon

The paper investigates how well common large‑language‑model (LLM) inference optimizations perform on Apple Silicon compared to server‑class NVIDIA GPUs. Four optimization families—KV‑cache pruning, speculative decoding, ported GPU kernels, and post‑training quantization—are evaluated on four Apple machines under a single‑request decode workload, with matched RTX 4090 comparisons where possible. Results show that KV‑cache pruning can boost Apple throughput up to 1.75×, while speculative decoding actually reduces throughput on Apple; CUDA kernel designs transfer only partially, and quantization gains vary by machine, indicating that speedups depend on the specific technique, runtime, hardware, and workload regime.

By Kyrylo Yemets, Andrii Yaroshevych, Victor Muryn, Ostap Khomenko, Pavlo Kryven, Maksym Kmet, Maksym Shamrai, Mariya Hirna