Explaining LLM Inference: How Prefill and Decode Stages Affect Speed

Recent technical posts break down LLM inference into two core stages: Prefill and Decode. The Prefill stage processes all input tokens at once, causing high compute load and first-token latency, while the Decode stage generates tokens sequentially.

2026-08-12 ~ 2026-08-13 · 2 related posts

• Understanding LLM inference: How Prefill and Decode phases impact speed — techNmak · 2026-08-12
• LLM Inference Explained: Why the First Token Lags and the Rest Stream Smoothly — Roger_M_Taylor · 2026-08-13