arXiv AI By Ekagra Ranjan, Komal K. Teru, Bharat Venkitesh, Acyr Locatelli

Why Speculative Decoding Works Better Than Predicted on Sparse MoE Models

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The paper investigates why speculative decoding (SD) performs better than expected on sparse mixture-of-experts (MoE) models. By evaluating 10 large MoE models, the authors find that recent fine‑grained models achieve higher speedups at low batch sizes, contrary to prior predictions of a concave speedup‑batch relationship. They attribute this to lower verification costs driven by temporal overlap of draft tokens and GPU execution dynamics, and develop a maximum‑entropy IPF framework that accurately predicts unique expert counts from routing overlap, closely matching real‑model behavior.

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