SLO-Aware GPU DVFS for Energy-Efficient LLM Inference Serving

The increasing popularity of LLM-based chatbots combined with their reliance on power-hungry GPU infrastructure forms a critical challenge for providers: minimizing energy consumption under Service-Level Objectives (SLOs) that ensure optimal user experience. Traditional energy optimization methods fall short for LLM inference due to their autoregressive architecture, which renders them incapable of meeting a predefined SLO without energy overprovisioning. This autoregressive nature however, allows for iteration-level adjustments, enabling continuous fine-tuning of the system throughout the inference process. In this letter, we propose a solution based on iteration-level GPU Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS), aiming to reduce the energy impact of LLM serving, an approach that has the potential for more than 22.8% and up to 45.5% energy gains when tested in real world situations under varying SLO constraints. Our approach works on top of existing LLM hosting services, requires minimal profiling and no intervention to the inference serving system.