A Tight Linear Deterministic Competitive Ratio for Fully Online KV-Cache Scheduling

Abstract

Jaillet et al. introduced a fully online model for batching nonpreemptive LLM requests under a growing KV-cache memory constraint. For total end-to-end latency they proved that every deterministic algorithm has competitive ratio Omega(sqrt(n)), while the elementary sequential upper bound is n. We close this gap. Let R_det(n,M) be the optimal deterministic ratio for exactly n requests at memory M, and let R_det(n)=sup_M R_det(n,M). For every n>= 2 we prove (n-1)/12<= R_det(n)<= n, so R_det(n)=Theta(n). The lower bound releases one memory-filling long request, observes its deterministic start time, and then releases n-1 wide one-token requests halfway through the long run. No short request can overlap the long one, whereas a hindsight schedule runs the two groups in the opposite order when useful. The hard instance uses the explicit fixed memory M=2(n-1)n. The upper bound is achieved by a uniform causal serial policy. The exact model, causality argument, both comparator branches, and quantifier order are machine-checked in Lean 4. Exact finite controls and replay commands accompany the proof.