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.
arXiv:2607. 05475v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) on mobile devices enhances privacy and reduces latency, but is severely bottlenecked by hardware inefficiency.
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.
arXiv:2609.09662v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) directly on mobile platforms at the edge is gaining traction due to a myriad of benefits, such as increased pr...
arXiv:2607. 22568v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed on mobile and embedded devices to improve privacy and reduce network latency.
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.
arXiv:2608.28667v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) has raised concerns about their environmental impact during inference. While Green AI researc...
arXiv:2610.17531v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While it is known that quantization of large language models (LLMs) reduces memory usage via lower-bit weights, studies quantifying the resulting imp...
arXiv:2609.33965v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We describe a methodology for estimating the per-token energy cost of cloud-hosted large language model (LLM) inference, separating between i...
arXiv:2603. 23640v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Deploying large language models on-device for always-on personal agents demands sustained inference from hardware tightly constrained in power, thermal envelope, and memory.
The paper titled "The Accuracy-Efficiency Paradox Quantifying Net Energy Loss in on-Device Energy Forecasting" discusses how highly accurate energy forecasting models can paradoxically cause a net energy deficit on edge devices due to inference energy consumption and battery aging. It introduces a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) framework that unifies inference energy and battery degradation as forms of energy loss, aiming to minimize net energy loss. Experiments show that in thermally sensitive edge environments, the energy saved by more precise, complex models is often offset by the higher operational intensity they require.
arXiv:2511. 07885v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) queries are predominantly processed by frontier models in centralized cloud infrastructure.
arXiv:2609.08307v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as backends for intelligent web services, but serving them across the edge continuum requires bala...