FastCache: Optimizing Multimodal LLM Serving through Lightweight KV-Cache Compression Framework

Abstract

Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) serving systems commonly employ KV-cache compression to reduce memory footprint. However, existing compression methods introduce significant processing overhead and queuing delays, particularly in concurrent serving scenarios. We present \texttt{FastCache}, a novel serving framework that effectively addresses these challenges through two key innovations: (1) a dynamic batching strategy that optimizes request scheduling across prefill, compression, and decode stages, and (2) an efficient KV-cache memory pool mechanism that eliminates memory fragmentation while maintaining high GPU utilization. Our comprehensive experiments on the GQA and MileBench datasets demonstrate that \texttt{FastCache} achieves up to 19.3$\times$ reduction in Time-To-First-Token (TTFT) and 12.1$\times$ improvement in throughput compared to state-of-the-art baselines. The system maintains stable performance under high-concurrency scenarios (up to 40 req/s) while reducing average memory consumption by 20\%. These results establish \texttt{FastCache} as an efficient solution for real-world LLM serving systems with KV-cache compression.