I don't understand how DeepSeek can be so cheap with their cache pricing - ~0.003 usd / 1Mtok. 100x less than Kimi K3, or similar numbers against pretty much any other decently sized model to my knowledge. I've been using it whenever possible as even longer agent sessions cost few cents.
If you read DeepSeek's papers, you'll find a litany of architectural features that allow for a greatly reduced cache hit price by shrinking the size of the KV-cache.
Many of these techniques haven't been published very long ago - it often takes a good 6-8 months for techniques to percolate. But also, they come at a complexity cost and, seemingly, also at a stability cost.
Also potentially a performance (in terms of output quality) cost. DeepSeek is cheap on a per token basis but lags behind in the benchmarks, perhaps it was a calculated tradeoff.
* Tons of gray testing going on for the last 2+ weeks (people at random getting the new v4 model for a while before its removed again).
* It also DeepSeek their 3th birthday this Friday.
* The its been almost 3 months from the v4 DeepSeek release, and the model everybody have been using, was not post-trained. That is what they have been doing during this time.
People trying out the new DSv4 via the web chat with quick game creation tests. People pulling out stuff like Stellaris clones etc.
The Battlefront like game is impressive. Sure, the soldiers are backwards and the graphics are still kind of basic. But the entire movement system (run/walk/crouch/jump), gun mechanics, grenades, capture points, AI fighting / capturing back, etc ... Ended up playing it way too darn long lol The text is in mandarin but its not too hard to figure out the menu. Sniper is OP ;)
The Horizon 6 game has everywhere mesh colliders, shows when you off track dirt being kicked up, etc ... In general, both example are very well polished minus the reverse soldiers issue.
And the price is supposed to stay the same (beyond the doubling during Chinese workhours), because everybody got that update.
I don't understand how DeepSeek can be so cheap with their cache pricing - ~0.003 usd / 1Mtok. 100x less than Kimi K3, or similar numbers against pretty much any other decently sized model to my knowledge. I've been using it whenever possible as even longer agent sessions cost few cents.