Problems / LLM serving, hard

KV cache not reused

A KV-cache tier sits in front of prefill, but only 10% of requests reuse a cached prefix: the system prompt changes per user, so prefixes never match.

Free to open. Runs in your browser, no sign-up.

Your goals

Success ≥ 99%, p99 ≤ 5 s.

The traffic

260 requests a second for 30 seconds: 100% request (reads).

The system

What each component does in this design, and what calls it. The simulator mimics each one from these settings.

ComponentIts job hereSettings
Load balancerLoad balancerTraffic enters here.Calls AI app.Layer 4 balancers route by IP and port; layer 7 balancers read HTTP and can route by path or header.–
AI appApp serviceLoad balancer forwards to it.Calls KV cache tier.Little's law: throughput ≈ concurrency ÷ latency. 200 slots at 50 ms serve about 4,000 req/s.3 replicas × 500 slots · timeout 30 s
KV cache tierKV cache tierAI app calls it.Calls Prefill GPU pool.Reusing the KV cache of a shared prefix (system prompt, chat history) skips most of the prefill work.2000 slots · 10% hit rate
Prefill GPU poolPrefill GPU poolKV cache tier calls it.Splitting prefill (reading the prompt) from decode (writing the answer) onto separate GPUs stops long prompts from stalling everyone else’s output.40 slots

Hints

Try it first. Open one hint at a time if you get stuck.

Hint 1

Each miss is a full prefill.

Hint 2

Shared prefixes must come first and be byte-identical.

One way to solve it

Raise the KV cache hit rate by putting the shared prompt first.

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