When self-hosted LLM inference beats API pricing in 2026 — with a decision matrix for vLLM, SGLang, and llama.cpp, working Azure deployment patterns, and the real GPU cost math for Malaysian enterprises.
The LLM market split into two clear tiers in mid-2026: frontier reasoning models and high-throughput workhorses. Here's how Malaysian enterprises should pick the right one for each workload.
80% of AI GPU spend is now inference, not training. Here's the layered optimization playbook — quantization, KV cache compression, continuous batching, speculative decoding, and prompt caching — that delivers 10x cost reductions for Malaysian enterprises.
Running LLMs in production is a serious engineering discipline. The gap between naive and optimized inference is the difference between a viable product and an expensive failure.