Which Eviction Policy Should an LLM Cache Use? A Systematic Study Across Workloads, Capacities, and Encoders
Semantic caches reuse an LLM response when the incoming query embedding lies near a cached query, but proposed eviction policies have rarely been compared under one protocol. Using CLEVER, we evaluate FIFO, LRU, LFU, ARC, GDSF, a single-pass streaming adaptation of SISO, and a semantic-redundancy policy across three ordered, deduplicated query corpora, three cache capacities, and two encoders. No evaluated policy improves on LFU by more than 0.041 percentage points in any of the eighteen settings. Replacement is not irrelevant: FIFO and streaming SISO trail LFU by as much as 8.67 and 8.55 points, respectively, at tight capacity. We explain the missing upside with a conditional packing res...
| Authors | Yash Kulkarni, Shubham Harkare, Arvind Yogesh Suresh Babu |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.DB |
| Published | 20 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 22 August 2026 |
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