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Replica

What is replica?

A replica is one running copy of a model serving requests. Adding replicas increases throughput and cost roughly linearly; it does not reduce the latency of an individual request, which is set by the model and the hardware.

The distinction is worth being precise about because it is a common confusion. More replicas means more requests handled at once; each one still takes as long as it took.

Replica count is therefore a capacity decision driven by concurrency, and reducing single-request latency is a different problem addressed by model size, hardware class or output length.

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