Understanding the Physics of Key-Value Cache Compression for LLMs through Attention Dynamics

As context windows in LLMs scale to 100K+ tokens, the key-value (KV) cache becomes the dominant memory bottleneck, with recent methods claiming 80-90% savings and minimal benchmark degradation. We argue these evaluations miss a structural issue: attention is not just storage but routing, and retaining KV pairs does not guarantee semantic accessibility. We propose a physics-inspired view of KV compression as a controlled perturbation of token-level routing, distinguishing retention, accessibility, and utilization. Using synthetic tasks probing multi-entity tracking, disambiguation, coreference, and multi-hop reasoning, we find that moderate compression degrades internal representations with little accuracy loss, revealing redundancy; all models exhibit a sharp hallucination safety cliff near 90% compression, correlated with spikes in Global Eviction Ratio (GER), suggesting a phase transition in semantic reachability; and architectures differ in routing dynamics, with LLaMA showing early consensus and late diversification, and Qwen showing funnel-like late convergence, leading to distinct resilience profiles. Beyond erasure, we identify representational rigidity, where excessive head-level consensus collapses routing flexibility despite token survival. These results suggest sparse token-route structures govern compression tolerance, reframing KV compression as a structural probe of attention geometry and linking long-context scalability to sparsity and the lottery ticket hypothesis in self-attention.

Enhancing IoT based Plant Health Monitoring through Advanced Human Plant Interaction using Large Language Models and Mobile Applications

This paper presents the development of a novel plant communication application that allows plants to "talk" to humans using real-time sensor data and AI-powered language models. Utilizing soil sensors that track moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels, the system feeds this data into the Gemini API, where it is processed and transformed into natural language insights about the plant's health and "mood." Developed using Flutter, Firebase, and ThingSpeak, the app offers a seamless user experience with real-time interaction capabilities. By fostering human-plant connectivity, this system enhances plant care practices, promotes sustainability, and introduces innovative applications for AI and IoT technologies in both personal and agricultural contexts. The paper explores the technical architecture, system integration, and broader implications of AI-driven plant communication.