Learn/Core Concept What is speculative decoding? Speculative decoding is a parallel inference technique that generates multiple potential tokens simultaneously using a smaller, faster "draft" model, then validates them with the main model. This approach can achieve 2-3x speedups without quality loss by reducing the sequential bottleneck of autoregressive generation. The technique works brilliantly for production systems where latency matters more than raw throughput. As detailed in this analysis, it's particularly effective when the draft model can predict the main model's behaviour accurately. Devs building real-time AI features should consider this over simple scaling approaches. InferenceParallelisation |