Agent workloads turn KV cache into a storage problem: 11.7x read/write ratio
AccBalanced · x · 2026-10-06
As agents keep state across longer multi-turn conversations, reusable KV cache is spilling across HBM, CPU memory, flash, and other storage tiers.
- In one 42-call Claude Code session analyzed by Nvidia's Dynamo team: 891K cached-token reads vs only 76K writes — an 11.7× read/write ratio
- KV cache is now its own infrastructure problem, not a small caching optimization inside the inference stack
- Nvidia's CMX is a pod-level, Ethernet-attached flash tier built for this KV traffic; Dynamo's KVBM can tier KV across GPU memory, CPU memory, disk, and object storage
The core issue: multi-turn agents generate lots of reusable state, forcing systems to decide where to place and schedule KV data across storage tiers.
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