Polynomial Context-Truncation Sensitivity in Autoregressive Language Models: Sequential Wyner-Ziv Bounds for KV Cache Compression

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arXiv:2605.25085v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the rate-distortion limits of online KV cache compression in autoregressive language models, formulating it as sequential Wyner-Ziv source coding on the filtration induced by the model, with the next-step query as decoder side information. Empirically, across four models spanning two families and $0.5$-$3$B parameters, we find that the next-token distribution's sensitivity to context truncation decays \emph{polynomially} rather than \emp

Published 26 May 2026

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Title: Polynomial Context-Truncation Sensitivity in Autoregressive Language Models: Sequential Wyner-Ziv Bounds for KV Cache Compression

Abstract:
arXiv:2605.25085v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the rate-distortion limits of online KV cache compression in autoregressive language models, formulating it as sequential Wyner-Ziv source coding on the filtration induced by the model, with the next-step query as decoder side information. Empirically, across four models spanning two families and $0.5$-$3$B parameters, we find that the next-token distribution's sensitivity to context truncation decays \emph{polynomially} rather than \emp
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