How to pronounce PagedAttention

PagedAttention is most commonly pronounced "payjd uh ten shun" (/ˈpeɪdʒd əˈtɛnʃən/). This is the widely-used reading among engineers, though edge cases exist.

vLLM's core attention algorithm, named after OS virtual-memory PAGING. Two parts: "paged" + "attention". STRESS: PAYJD uh-TEN-shun. The hazard is "paged" — it is /peɪdʒd/ (rhymes with "caged", one syllable, voiced -jd cluster), NOT two-syllable "page-ed". From the verb "to page" the KV cache into fixed-size blocks. Common in inference-infra discussion 2023-2026.

Source: arXiv 2309.06180 — Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention

Pronouncing project and product names correctly avoids the small but persistent friction of being gently corrected during standups, conference Q&As, and team calls. Hearing the word a few times locks in the right reading better than reading IPA ever will. Pronounce is a community-maintained dictionary — every entry tagged with a confidence level and (where possible) a citable source.