Deep Dives
Multimodal Inference: Split the Encoder Only When It Pays
Encoder-prefill-decode disaggregation can reduce multimodal time to first token and increase same-SLO throughput, but only when vision encoding is a large enough share of request time. Teams should trace each serving stage, benchmark a workload matrix, optimize media preprocessing and caching, and promote only the traffic buckets that clear a reversible latency and cost gate.
