Transformer inference involves generating predictions using transformer models, which are heavily utilized in natural language processing and computer vision tasks. This process requires substantial computational resources, particularly due to the high number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) involved in matrix multiplications across multiple layers, as seen in models like GPT-3. To enhance efficiency, techniques such as Key-Value (KV) caching are employed, which speed up autoregressive decoding by reusing previously computed attention vectors. Memory usage is another significant challenge, with large models demanding extensive memory, prompting strategies like quantization and parallelism to manage resources more effectively. Transformer inference consists of two main phases: the prefill phase, which processes input sequences in parallel, and the decode phase, which is sequential and memory-bound, often causing latency issues. Optimizations like quantization, batching, and advanced hardware techniques such as tensor and pipeline parallelism are crucial for improving performance, reducing latency, and managing the computational load of these large language models. Emerging trends, including FlashAttention, multi-query attention, and speculative inference, further aim to optimize memory usage and computation efficiency, crucial for scaling models and meeting real-world application demands.