Efficiently Scaling LLM Reasoning Programs with Certaindex
Yichao Fu, Junda Chen, Siqi Zhu, Fu, Zhongdongming Dai, Yonghao Zhuang, Yian Ma, Aurick Qiao, Tajana S Rosing, Ion Stoica, Hao Zhang
Test-time reasoning algorithms such as chain-of-thought, self-consistency, and MCTS enhance LLM problem-solving but can wastefully generate many tokens without improving accuracy. At the same time, we observe that these algorithms exhibit answer stabilization: their intermediate solutions often cease to change after a certain point, and further investment of compute does not change their final answer. To quantify this phenomenon, we introduce Certaindex, an algorithm-agnostic metric measuring this evolving stability, signaling when further computation is unlikely to alter the final result. Certaindex is lightweight, can accelerate reasoning program inference via early exit, and further enables dynamic token allocation, gang scheduling, and many opportunities when integrated with real-world LLM serving systems. To quantify real-world benefits, we built Certaindex as a scheduler into Dynasor, our reasoning-aware LLM serving system, and demonstrate up to 50\% compute savings and 3.3$\times$ higher throughput in real workloads with no accuracy drop, with only $\sim500$ lines of code changes in the core system.