AvoKV-E: Payload-Aware KV Cache Eviction for Long Reasoning

Han Yu; Wenhui Zhu; Xiwen Chen; Zhipeng Wang; Hejian Sang; Han Shi; Menglin Zhou; Xuanzhao Dong; Minzhou Huang; Rui Cai; Hao Wang; Alborz Geramifard

arXiv · 2610.03007

AvoKV-E: Payload-Aware KV Cache Eviction for Long Reasoning

Han Yu·Wenhui Zhu·Xiwen Chen·Zhipeng Wang·Hejian Sang·Han Shi·Menglin Zhou·Xuanzhao Dong·Minzhou Huang·Rui Cai·Hao Wang·Alborz Geramifard

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Abstract

Long-output reasoning shifts the KV-cache bottleneck from the fixed prompt to the generated trace. Existing reasoning-cache eviction methods largely treat cached entries as routing objects, estimating whether an old key will still be read, will recur, or can be replaced. This routing-only view overlooks two effects: low-attention entries can carry large value payloads whose removal changes future predictions, and newly generated states can appear stale before later queries have had a chance to read them. We introduce AvoKV-E, a training-free eviction policy that first delays eligibility for recent states and then ranks eligible entries using candidate-normalized read pressure, key redundancy, and value-payload potential. According to empirical evaluation across different models and datasets, AvoKV-E matches or exceeds redundancy-aware, recurrence-based, and thought-adaptive eviction baselines at matched active-KV budgets, with its largest gains in the tightest-cache regime. Component and counterfactual analyses further connect these gains to delayed observation, payload-aware scoring, redundancy, and scale-robust normalization. Together, the results show that long-reasoning KV eviction should preserve not only keys that are likely to be read, but also the value payloads that sustain the reasoning trajectory.

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BibTeX RIS

Han Yu, Wenhui Zhu, Xiwen Chen, Zhipeng Wang, Hejian Sang, Han Shi, Menglin Zhou, Xuanzhao Dong, Minzhou Huang, Rui Cai, Hao Wang, Alborz Geramifard. 2026-10-02. AvoKV-E: Payload-Aware KV Cache Eviction for Long Reasoning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03007

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