How do you measure whether speculative decoding is actu...

To validate the effectiveness of speculative decoding, one must track the mean acceptance rate (alpha) across different request classes to identify performance degradation. Comparing the effective tokens-per-second against a direct-decode baseline confirms the throughput gain. Finally, monitoring the p99 latency to the first token ensures that the speculation process is not negatively impacting the initial response time, as speculation should only affect the generation phase.