The Efficient Frontier of LLM Inference: Tradeoffs and Techniques
philipkiely · x · 2026-09-02
This article borrows the economic concept of the "efficient frontier" to discuss LLM inference engineering, defining a model as a "frontier model" if it offers the highest intelligence at a given cost or size. It distinguishes between techniques that trade off factors (latency vs. throughput, quality for throughput, intelligence for speed) to move along the frontier, and those that push the entire frontier outward. The piece covers specific strategies like quantization, distillation, pruning, and reasoning level adjustments.
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