Latency measurement methodology

Research cut-off date: 2026-07-22. Status: Phase 2, not yet written. This file states the scope of the work, the arguments it owns, and the research required to complete it. It contains no findings, because none have been sourced. See the changelog for phase status.

Scope

Specifies how a latency measurement in this repository is produced and reported: warm-up policy, request pattern, concurrency levels, prompt and output lengths, percentiles reported, region, client location, and clock methodology. A latency figure that does not carry these conditions is not admitted.

Research checklist

• Specify the warm-up and cold-start policy and require it to be reported.
• Specify which percentiles are mandatory: p50, p90, p95, and p99.
• Specify how time to first token is measured under streaming, including where the clock starts and stops.
• Specify the minimum number of requests per configuration and the basis for that minimum.
• Specify how network path and client location are reported, since they are part of the measurement.

Completion criteria

This file is complete when every checklist item above is closed and the quality-control checklist in the research methodology passes.