Three serving runtimes that look interchangeable on a benchmark slide and aren't. The axes that actually separate them (scheduler, kernels, operability) and the one-line rule for which to reach for.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Three serving runtimes that look interchangeable on a benchmark slide and aren't. The axes that actually separate them (scheduler, kernels, operability) and the one-line rule for which to reach for.
The screen is whether you can name the real differentiators (continuous batching and PagedAttention in vLLM, compiled per-model engines in TensorRT-LLM, the operational packaging of TGI) rather than reciting throughput numbers off a vendor chart. Candidates who say 'TensorRT-LLM is fastest, use it' fail the follow-up about build time, model coverage, and hardware lock-in. The strong answer ties the pick to a concrete constraint: hardware, time-to-ship, or peak throughput on a fixed model.
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