Million-Token Machine, Part 1: The KV Cache Wars

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 10, 2026 · 1h 1m

Part one of Million-Token Machine starts with the growing memory bill behind long-context language models. Attention and the KV cache explain why the cost persists as a conversation gets longer. The episode examines fewer-head approaches, latent representations, memory tiers and persistent cache strategies, connecting architectural ideas to serving constraints. It closes by identifying tradeoffs and reasons for skepticism, setting up the next episode's closer look at the model architecture.

Created by Sankalp Thakur. A Transient Labs production.

Website: https://transientlabs.ai

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