Prefill Is Compute-Bound. Decode Is Memory-Bound. Why Your GPU Shouldn’t Do Both.

Towards Data Science / 4/16/2026

💬 OpinionDeveloper Stack & InfrastructureIdeas & Deep Analysis

Key Points

  • The article argues that disaggregated LLM inference can reduce inference costs by 2–4x by splitting workloads rather than running both stages on a single GPU.

Inside disaggregated LLM inference — the architecture shift behind 2-4x cost reduction that most ML teams haven't adopted yet.

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