LLM Cost and Latency Notes: using caching where it actually pays off
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
161 articles
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I tightened system boundaries so quality checks trigger earlier, catching regressions before downstream systems consume bad data.
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I tightened system boundaries so quality checks trigger earlier, catching regressions before downstream systems consume bad data.
I turned implicit processes into explicit operating rules—defining owners, acceptance tests, and lightweight runbooks so teams can move confidently and…
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I turned implicit processes into explicit operating rules—defining owners, acceptance tests, and lightweight runbooks so teams can move confidently and…
I turned implicit processes into explicit operating rules—defining owners, acceptance tests, and lightweight runbooks so teams can move confidently and…
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I focused on making delivery decisions auditable and repeatable—documenting intent, success criteria, and rollback paths to reduce tribal knowledge.
I turned implicit processes into explicit operating rules—defining owners, acceptance tests, and lightweight runbooks so teams can move confidently and…
I spent the day reducing cognitive overhead for engineers and analysts—introducing clearer table contracts, simpler failure modes, and concise runbooks that…
I turned implicit processes into explicit operating rules—defining owners, acceptance tests, and lightweight runbooks so teams can move confidently and…
I spent the day reducing cognitive overhead for engineers and analysts—introducing clearer table contracts, simpler failure modes, and concise runbooks that…
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I spent the day reducing cognitive overhead for engineers and analysts—introducing clearer table contracts, simpler failure modes, and concise runbooks that…
I spent the day reducing cognitive overhead for engineers and analysts—introducing clearer table contracts, simpler failure modes, and concise runbooks that…
I tightened system boundaries so quality checks trigger earlier, catching regressions before downstream systems consume bad data.
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
I spent the day reducing cognitive overhead for engineers and analysts—introducing clearer table contracts, simpler failure modes, and concise runbooks that…
I tightened system boundaries so quality checks trigger earlier, catching regressions before downstream systems consume bad data.
I worked on smoothing the handoff between data engineering and AI teams—standardizing feature contracts, embedding validation, and adding lightweight…
Latency: P50, P95, P99 response times Cost: Per query, per user, per day Quality: Response relevance, accuracy
"I need to be very detailed and explain everything thoroughly to get good results." No. You need to be clear, not verbose.
The most significant shift this year was the maturation of autonomous AI agents. What started as experimental frameworks evolved into production-ready…
While linters catch syntax issues, AI reviewers understand context, identify logical errors, suggest architectural improvements, and explain complex code…
Traditional caching requires exact matches. Users asking "What is Azure?" and "Can you explain Azure?" would generate two separate API calls. Semantic…
LLM systems have unique characteristics: non-deterministic outputs, variable latency, complex cost models, and quality metrics that require semantic…
Fine-tuning makes sense when you need consistent style, specialized terminology, or improved performance on specific tasks that prompt engineering cannot…
LLM outputs vary between runs and model versions. Testing must focus on behavioral properties rather than exact string matching, while still catching…
Test AI components within the full application context, including error handling, timeout behavior, and integration with downstream systems.
Fine-tuning is appropriate when you need consistent formatting, domain-specific language understanding, or reduced prompt lengths. However, it requires…
Include examples in prompts to guide model behavior for domain-specific tasks. This is especially effective for classification and formatting tasks where…
The best chunking strategy depends on your document types. Technical documentation benefits from header-aware chunking. Conversational content works well…
Prompt injection occurs when user input is interpreted as instructions rather than data. Attackers can attempt to override system prompts, extract…
Content safety is non-negotiable for production AI applications. Implement multiple layers of filtering for both inputs and outputs to protect users and…
Long-term memory transforms one-shot interactions into ongoing relationships. Users feel understood when the AI remembers their preferences, past issues…
Invest time in crafting and testing your system prompts. They are the foundation of consistent, high-quality AI interactions.
Unlike exact-match caching, semantic caching uses embeddings to find similar queries even when worded differently.
Instead of updating all model weights, LoRA injects trainable low-rank matrices into transformer layers. These adapters capture task-specific knowledge…
Multi-agent architectures shine for tasks requiring diverse expertise: research reports, code reviews, complex analysis, and creative projects. The key is…
For even stricter control, use the structured outputs feature with a JSON schema. JSON mode transforms LLMs from conversational tools into reliable data…
Fine-tuning makes sense when you need consistent formatting, domain-specific terminology, or significant behavior changes that prompting cannot achieve…
At its core, an AI agent follows a simple loop: observe, think, act, repeat. Tools should be focused, well-documented, and handle errors gracefully.
When faced with multi-step problems, LLMs perform better when prompted to reason step-by-step rather than jump directly to answers.
Quality encompasses completeness, accuracy, consistency, timeliness, and validity. Each dimension requires specific checks.
A well-structured prompt includes context, instructions, examples, and output format specifications.
The o1 models are designed for tasks requiring deep reasoning: mathematical proofs, code debugging, scientific analysis, and strategic planning. They take…
Semantic Kernel is an SDK that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with conventional programming languages. Version 2.x introduces a more streamlined…
Log prompts and responses for failed interactions to a secure store for debugging. Implement sampling for successful calls to control storage costs while…
Structured outputs eliminate parsing errors. Add business validation for semantic correctness - the schema ensures format, you ensure meaning.
Use Redis Vector Search for efficient similarity matching at scale. Tune the similarity threshold based on your use case - higher values ensure more precise…
Add a blinking cursor effect while streaming to indicate ongoing generation. Users perceive streaming responses as 3-5x faster than equivalent non-streaming…
Speculative decoding can achieve 2-3x speedup without any quality degradation.
The right model size depends on your specific requirements, not just capabilities.
Fine-tuning is a powerful tool when used appropriately, but prompt engineering often achieves similar results faster.
Strategic context management enables handling of complex, long-context scenarios.
The right model isn't always the biggest one. Match model capability to task requirements for optimal cost, latency, and quality.
RAG 2.0 is about precision and reliability. Invest in retrieval quality, and your generation quality will follow.
Query: "What's the average order value by customer segment?" SQL: """ Effective prompt engineering is about clear communication. The better you describe…
These patterns form the building blocks of production AI applications. Combine them based on your specific requirements, and always include proper error…
Azure AI Foundry provides the foundation for enterprise AI applications. Start with simple use cases, measure results, and expand from there.
Reasoning models represent a significant advancement in AI capability. Use them for problems that truly require deep thinking, and you'll see dramatically…
Provide specific improvements. """) Gemini 2 represents Google's serious commitment to AI. For organizations already on Google Cloud, it's an excellent…
These priorities will shape Claude 4's development. Anthropic's commitment to safety and capability suggests Claude 4 will be a significant advancement.…
The jump from GPT-4 to GPT-5 will likely be significant. Organizations that prepare now will be able to leverage new capabilities immediately upon release.
LLMOps is essential for reliable LLM applications. Start with prompt management and evaluation, then add observability and cost tracking as you scale.
The Model Catalog gives you flexibility to choose the right model for each use case while maintaining a consistent API. Experiment with different models to…
The reasoning tokens are where the model works through the problem step-by-step, similar to how humans solve complex problems.
Building custom observability gives you full control over your data and features. Start simple and add complexity as your needs grow.
Arize provides comprehensive production monitoring for LLMs with enterprise features like drift detection, alerting, and detailed analytics. It's ideal for…
Phoenix provides powerful local-first observability that keeps your data private while offering the visualization and analysis capabilities needed for…
MLflow provides a solid open-source foundation for LLM observability. Its strength lies in the familiar MLOps workflow and integration with the broader ML…
Weights & Biases provides a comprehensive platform for LLM observability, evaluation, and collaboration. Its strength lies in combining experiment tracking…
The evolution of tool use in AI represents a fundamental shift from constrained function execution to general-purpose computer interaction. This trajectory…
Agentic capabilities transform AI from a question-answering system into an autonomous problem-solver. The key is combining planning, tools, memory, and…
Robust error handling is what separates prototypes from production systems. Invest in comprehensive error handling early to avoid painful debugging later.
As a developer constantly evaluating new tools to enhance productivity, I've recently implemented a setup that combines Azure OpenAI with two VSCode…
Reliable extraction requires careful schema design, multi-pass validation, and explicit handling of uncertainty. These patterns help you build extraction…
Understanding thinking tokens helps you make informed decisions about when o1's extended reasoning is worth the investment.
Traditional LLMs like GPT-4o are sophisticated pattern matchers. They predict the next token based on learned patterns from training data. While incredibly…
This could dramatically improve performance on complex tasks. The next breakthrough in AI capabilities is likely to come from better reasoning, not just…
Sounds like a lot, but it fills up quickly with conversation history, system prompts, tool outputs, and retrieved documents.
LangGraph provides these capabilities through a graph-based execution model.
LangChain 0.2.x Stability LCEL (LangChain Expression Language) Maturity Azure AI Search Vector Store
Semantic routing compares the meaning of a user's query against a set of example utterances. When the query is semantically similar to examples for a…
Latency has multiple components: 1. Network latency : Request travel time 2. Queue time : Waiting for processing 3. Time to first token (TTFT) : Initial…
Quality isn't one dimensional. Consider: Accuracy : Factual correctness Completeness : Covering all aspects Coherence : Logical flow and consistency…
The difference is dramatic. A 1000-token task costs $0.02 with GPT-4o but $0.0002 with GPT-4o-mini.
The simplest approach: fixed rules based on task type. Pros: Simple, predictable, easy to debug Cons: Doesn't adapt, requires manual tuning
Different tasks need different capability levels. Using GPT-4o for simple classifications wastes money.
Performance That Competes Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms Claude 3 Opus on most benchmarks while being significantly faster and cheaper. It's positioned as a…
Databricks Foundation Model APIs provide enterprise-ready access to state-of-the-art LLMs. This guide covers using these APIs for building AI applications.
The aiquery() function enables custom LLM interactions directly in SQL. Unlike specialized functions, it allows you to craft any prompt and get intelligent…
Databricks SQL AI functions bring large language model capabilities directly into SQL queries. Process text, generate insights, and enrich data without…
Natural language interfaces for data go beyond simple Q&A to enable complex analytical conversations. This guide explores advanced natural language query…
Natural language to SQL (NL2SQL) transforms how users interact with databases. This guide covers implementation strategies, from simple approaches to…
March 2024 was a transformative month for AI. Here's a comprehensive recap of the key developments and what they mean for practitioners.
An answer can be factually correct and grounded in context but still fail to address what was actually asked. Answer relevancy measures how well the…
While retrieval metrics measure what documents are found, generation metrics evaluate the quality of the synthesized answer. This guide covers metrics…
RAGAS (Retrieval Augmented Generation Assessment) is an open-source framework for evaluating RAG pipelines. This guide covers how to implement and use RAGAS…
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems combine retrieval and generation components, each requiring specific evaluation strategies. This guide covers…
Generic benchmarks like MMLU and HumanEval don't predict performance on your specific use cases. This guide covers how to design and implement task-specific…
HumanEval is the standard benchmark for measuring LLM code generation capabilities. Understanding its methodology and limitations is essential for…
MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding) is one of the most cited LLM benchmarks. Understanding what it measures and its limitations is crucial for…
Understanding LLM benchmarks is essential for making informed model selection decisions. This guide covers the major benchmarks and how to interpret their…
The choice between open-source and proprietary LLMs is one of the most important architectural decisions for AI projects. Let's analyze the tradeoffs…
Meta's Llama 2 70B represents the state of the art in open-source large language models. Available on Azure AI, it offers a compelling alternative to…
Mistral Large is now available on Azure AI, bringing one of Europe's most capable AI models to the Azure ecosystem. This guide covers deployment, usage, and…
The Azure AI Model Catalog continues to expand with new models and capabilities. This month brings significant updates including new foundation models and…
Today, Anthropic released Claude 3 - their most capable AI model family yet. With three models (Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku), Anthropic is directly challenging…
While the AI community anticipates Claude 3's tiered model approach, it's worth examining how to right-size your AI workloads today. Understanding when to…
With Claude 3 expected soon, now is a good time to compare the current state of play between Claude 2.1 and GPT-4. Let's dive into a technical comparison of…
Anthropic has been signaling that Claude 3 is on the horizon, and the AI community is buzzing with anticipation. Based on Anthropic's track record and hints…
1. Start conservative Higher threshold (0.95+) for critical applications 2. Tune with data Evaluate on your actual query patterns 3. Monitor quality Track…
1. Start with exact match Simple and effective 2. Add semantic caching For variable phrasing 3. Set appropriate TTL Balance freshness and savings 4. Monitor…
Token cost analysis enables informed decisions about LLM usage. Track, analyze, and optimize to keep costs predictable and manageable.
1. Cache aggressively Identical queries don't need re processing 2. Tier your models Match model to task complexity 3. Optimize prompts Shorter prompts =…
Model selection should be systematic, not arbitrary. Define your requirements, score candidates objectively, and document decisions for future review.
LLMs are different beasts: unpredictable, context‑sensitive, and often opaque. Model risk management for LLMs needs to emphasise provenance, prompt…
2023 will be talked about for a long time in AI circles — the year foundation models moved from research labs into the backbone of enterprise software. From…
LLM benchmarking methodology matters more than the benchmark scores themselves, because the standard public benchmarks (MMLU for general knowledge…
The open-source LLM landscape in late 2023 is richer than most enterprise teams have had time to evaluate — and the pace of model releases (Llama 2 in July…
Mistral 7B — released by Mistral AI on September 27, 2023 with a permissive Apache 2.0 licence — is the open-source model that forced a recalibration of…
The Azure Model Catalog (available in Azure AI Studio and Azure ML) is where Microsoft is building the answer to the model selection question — "which…
Azure AI Studio arrived at Ignite 2023 as a significantly expanded platform — and "expanded" is the right word, because it builds on Azure ML Studio's…
Testing LLM applications is a problem that doesn't have a satisfying general-purpose solution yet, and that's worth acknowledging before diving into…
Advanced techniques for improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems for better accuracy and relevance.
Comprehensive strategies for detecting and mitigating hallucinations in LLM-generated content.
Comprehensive strategies for defending against prompt injection attacks in LLM applications.
Essential AI safety concepts and practices for building responsible LLM applications.
Implementing human feedback systems to improve LLM application quality through user input and expert evaluation.
Master parallel execution patterns in LangChain to build faster, more efficient LLM applications.
Learn advanced techniques for composing LangChain chains into complex, multi-step LLM workflows.
Deep dive into LangChain's Runnable interface and its implementations for building flexible LLM pipelines.
Advanced LCEL patterns for building robust, scalable LLM applications in production environments.
Understanding LangChain Expression Language for building composable LLM applications with clean, declarative syntax.
This concludes our August 2023 series on LLM optimization and vector stores.
LangChain's velocity in 2023 has been remarkable and occasionally destabilising — the 0.0.x series has introduced breaking API changes in point releases…
Tomorrow we'll explore LangChain updates and new features. LangChain Memory Vector Stores Conversational Memory Patterns
Conversation summarisation is the practical solution to the context window problem for long-running chat applications. The approach: when the accumulated…
Tomorrow we'll explore conversation summarization techniques. Redis Caching Semantic Search LLM Caching Patterns
Tomorrow we'll explore context caching strategies. Text Summarization Survey Sentence Transformers ROUGE Score
Tomorrow we'll explore semantic compression techniques in more depth. LLMLingua Prompt Compression Paper Token Optimization Guide
Tomorrow we'll explore GPU optimization techniques. Continuous Batching Paper vLLM Batching Triton Inference Server
Tomorrow we'll explore batching strategies in detail. vLLM TensorRT LLM Speculative Decoding Paper
Tomorrow we'll explore PEFT libraries and their practical usage. PEFT Library Documentation Adapter Transformers PEFT Methods Survey
Tomorrow we'll explore parameter efficient fine tuning methods in more depth. LoRA Paper QLoRA Paper PEFT Library Hugging Face LoRA Guide
Fine-tuning is the right answer to fewer questions than the hype suggests, and I want to be precise about when it actually makes sense before diving into…
Token costs for GPT-4 in mid-2023 are real enough to design around: roughly $0.03 per 1K input tokens and $0.06 per 1K output tokens for the 8K context…
Effective context pruning ensures your LLM applications work reliably. Tomorrow, I will cover token budgeting strategies.
Function calling, released last week with the 0613 model versions, gives AI agents a proper foundation — and I've been rebuilding some agent prototypes to…
Prompt Flow provides the foundation for building production-grade LLM applications. Tomorrow, I will cover Azure Machine Learning updates from Build 2023.
AI agents represent the next evolution of AI systems. By combining planning, tool use, and memory, they can autonomously accomplish complex goals while…
LLM caching strategies are essential for production systems. By combining exact matching, semantic similarity, and intelligent invalidation, you can…
AI orchestration patterns enable building sophisticated AI systems from modular components. The key is designing for reliability, observability, and…
Entity extraction at scale transforms unstructured text into structured knowledge. Combining LLM intelligence with distributed processing enables insights…
LLM-powered feature engineering unlocks value from unstructured data. Combine semantic understanding with traditional ML for more powerful predictive models.
When building applications with GPT 3 and other LLMs, you need to think about: Prompt design and management Chaining multiple LLM calls Testing and…