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NVIDIA and Sarvam AI engineers collaborate, optimizing AI inference for sovereign models, achieving sub-second TTFT. [develop

Editorial illustration for NVIDIA Co-Design Boosts Sarvam AI Inference, Cuts TTFT Below One Second

NVIDIA Supercharges Sarvam AI's Sovereign LLM Engine

NVIDIA Co-Design Boosts Sarvam AI Inference, Cuts TTFT Below One Second

2 min read

NVIDIA’s extreme hardware‑software co‑design has turned Sarvam AI’s sovereign models into a practical inference engine, shaving the time‑to‑first‑token (TTFT) to under one second even when dozens of requests hit the system simultaneously. The partnership paired the latest H100 GPUs with a custom stack that initially delivered a “functional baseline” capable of handling typical workloads. Yet, when the team pushed the stack into high‑concurrency scenarios—think hundreds of parallel prompts—the baseline fell short of the sub‑second TTFT target that production users demand.

Detailed profiling exposed where the latency spikes originated, pointing to specific bottlenecks in the mixture‑of‑experts (MoE) pathways. What followed was a series of targeted kernel rewrites and precision tweaks aimed at squeezing every microsecond from the pipeline. The result is a finely tuned configuration that not only meets the aggressive latency goal but also scales gracefully under load.

The next section walks through exactly how those kernel and precision strategies were derived and why eliminating the MoE bottleneck mattered.

While this configuration provided a robust functional baseline, profiling revealed that satisfying the sub-second TTFT at high concurrency required deeper optimization - leading us to the specific kernel and precision strategies detailed below. From profiling to performance: eliminating MoE bottlenecks Simulation data indicated that a concurrency range of 32 to 64 requests would offer the best chance of meeting SLA requirements. To identify the precise bottlenecks limiting token throughput in this concurrency range, the NVIDIA and Sarvam AI teams utilized NVIDIA Nsight Systems to capture execution traces of both the prefill and decode phases at a concurrency of 32 requests.

Did the partnership deliver what it promised? NVIDIA’s extreme hardware‑software co‑design gave Sarvam AI a measurable inference boost, pushing time‑to‑first‑token under one second. The headline numbers look solid, yet the article notes that achieving sub‑second latency at high concurrency still demanded deeper kernel and precision tweaks.

While the baseline configuration proved functional, profiling exposed bottlenecks in the mixture‑of‑experts (MoE) layers that had to be eliminated. The team’s response—targeted kernel revisions and precision adjustments—appears to have closed the gap, but the report stops short of confirming long‑term stability under production loads. For startups building sovereign models from scratch, the balance between scale and cost remains a tightrope walk, and it is unclear whether the current optimizations will hold as model sizes grow.

The evidence suggests a promising step forward, yet further validation is needed to gauge whether the approach scales without sacrificing predictability. Ultimately, the findings underscore both the potential of co‑design and the ongoing challenges of delivering large‑scale LLM inference in real‑world settings.

Further Reading

Common Questions Answered

How did NVIDIA and Sarvam AI improve inference performance for sovereign AI models?

The collaboration delivered a 4x speedup in inference performance by combining kernel and scheduling optimizations on NVIDIA H100 SXM GPUs with the powerful compute capabilities of Blackwell architecture. They achieved this through NVFP4 weight quantization and optimizations that provided a 2x speedup on H100 GPUs and an additional 2x speedup with Blackwell, with even higher performance gains at interactive points.

What unique characteristics do Sarvam AI's sovereign foundation models possess?

Sarvam AI developed foundational models that support 22 Indian languages, English, math, and code, with model sizes ranging from 3B to 100B parameters. These models were specifically designed to maintain data sovereignty and serve India's diverse population, using NVIDIA Nemotron libraries and the NeMo Framework for training and optimization.

What key technologies did NVIDIA use to boost inference performance?

NVIDIA employed multiple optimization strategies, including the NVFP4 four-bit floating point format, multi-token prediction (MTP), and enhanced all-to-all communication primitives. These innovations allowed for significant increases in token throughput while maintaining model accuracy, particularly when running large models on platforms like the GB200 NVL72 and HGX B200.