vLLM powered by OpenVINO supports all LLM models from [vLLM supported models list](#supported-models) and can perform optimal model serving on all x86-64 CPUs with, at least, AVX2 support, as well as on both integrated and discrete Intel® GPUs ([the list of supported GPUs](https://docs.openvino.ai/2024/about-openvino/release-notes-openvino/system-requirements.html#gpu)). OpenVINO vLLM backend supports the following advanced vLLM features:
- [Optional] To use vLLM OpenVINO backend with a GPU device, ensure your system is properly set up. Follow the instructions provided here: [https://docs.openvino.ai/2024/get-started/configurations/configurations-intel-gpu.html](https://docs.openvino.ai/2024/get-started/configurations/configurations-intel-gpu.html).
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## Performance tips
### vLLM OpenVINO backend environment variables
-`VLLM_OPENVINO_DEVICE` to specify which device utilize for the inference. If there are multiple GPUs in the system, additional indexes can be used to choose the proper one (e.g, `VLLM_OPENVINO_DEVICE=GPU.1`). If the value is not specified, CPU device is used by default.
-`VLLM_OPENVINO_ENABLE_QUANTIZED_WEIGHTS=ON` to enable U8 weights compression during model loading stage. By default, compression is turned off. You can also export model with different compression techniques using `optimum-cli` and pass exported folder as `<model_id>`
### CPU performance tips
CPU uses the following environment variables to control behavior:
-`VLLM_OPENVINO_KVCACHE_SPACE` to specify the KV Cache size (e.g, `VLLM_OPENVINO_KVCACHE_SPACE=40` means 40 GB space for KV cache), larger setting will allow vLLM running more requests in parallel. This parameter should be set based on the hardware configuration and memory management pattern of users.
-`VLLM_OPENVINO_CPU_KV_CACHE_PRECISION=u8` to control KV cache precision. By default, FP16 / BF16 is used depending on platform.
To enable better TPOT / TTFT latency, you can use vLLM's chunked prefill feature (`--enable-chunked-prefill`). Based on the experiments, the recommended batch size is `256` (`--max-num-batched-tokens`)
GPU device implements the logic for automatic detection of available GPU memory and, by default, tries to reserve as much memory as possible for the KV cache (taking into account `gpu_memory_utilization` option). However, this behavior can be overridden by explicitly specifying the desired amount of memory for the KV cache using `VLLM_OPENVINO_KVCACHE_SPACE` environment variable (e.g, `VLLM_OPENVINO_KVCACHE_SPACE=8` means 8 GB space for KV cache).
Currently, the best performance using GPU can be achieved with the default vLLM execution parameters for models with quantized weights (8 and 4-bit integer data types are supported) and `preemption-mode=swap`.