To Cache or Not to Cache: Understanding and Mitigating Safety Incompatibility in Cross-Model KV Cache Reuse
Cross-model KV cache sharing reduces prefill computation by allowing a receiver model to reuse prefix KV states generated by a related sender model. Existing methods optimize such reuse for latency and generation quality, but its safety implications remain unclear. In this work, we systematically evaluate this issue across diverse sender-receiver pairs and reuse configurations. We refer to deviations from the receiver's native safety behavior as safety incompatibility. Our study shows that both the direction and magnitude of safety incompatibility depend on the model pair and reuse configuration, with value reuse causing substantially larger deviations than key reuse across all evaluated ...
| Authors | Zhiwei Lin, Jiahao Liu, Yan Liu et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 11 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 11 October 2026 |
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