# AI Infrastructure from First Principles This path starts with the core inference loop and builds toward serving concerns. ## Path 1. [[Topics/AI Infrastructure]] - Start with the topic overview. 2. [[Articles/Inference Core Loop of an Inference Engine]] - Understand autoregressive generation. 3. [[Articles/Inference Prefill and Decode]] - Learn why inference has distinct phases. 4. [[Field Notes/KV Cache]] - Understand the memory-performance tradeoff behind decode. 5. [[Topics/Distributed Systems]] - Connect inference serving to reliability and distributed systems. ## Related - [[Topics/Linux & Systems]] - [[Learning Paths/Zero to Production Engineer]]