Module 11: Quick Reference Cards — AI Essentials at a Glance

Type: Reference | Level: All Levels Usage: Bookmark this page — your daily AI quick-reference Last Updated: March 2026

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How to Use This Page

This module is designed as a fast-lookup reference. Every card is self-contained. Use your browser's Ctrl+F / Cmd+F to jump to any term instantly. No narrative — just facts, tables, and decision shortcuts.

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Card 1: LLM Generation Parameters Cheat Sheet

Every parameter you can tune when calling a large language model.

Parameter	Range	Typical Default	What It Controls	Rule of Thumb
Temperature	0.0 – 2.0	1.0	Randomness of token sampling. Lower = deterministic, higher = creative.	0.0–0.3 for factual / extraction. 0.7–1.0 for creative writing. Never exceed 1.5 in production.
Top-P (nucleus sampling)	0.0 – 1.0	1.0	Cumulative probability cutoff. Only tokens within the top-P mass are considered.	Use 0.9–0.95 for balanced output. Set to 1.0 and control via temperature, or vice-versa — avoid tuning both simultaneously.
Top-K	1 – vocabulary size	Model-dependent	Limits sampling to the K most probable next tokens.	40–100 is a safe range. Not exposed in Azure OpenAI — available in open-source / Hugging Face models.
Frequency Penalty	-2.0 – 2.0	0.0	Penalizes tokens proportionally to how often they already appeared. Reduces repetition.	0.3–0.8 to reduce repetitive phrasing. Values above 1.0 can distort output.
Presence Penalty	-2.0 – 2.0	0.0	Flat penalty applied once a token has appeared at all. Encourages topic diversity.	0.3–0.6 for varied topic coverage. Combine lightly with frequency penalty — don't max both.
Max Tokens (max_completion_tokens)	1 – model context limit	Model-dependent	Hard ceiling on response length in tokens.	Set explicitly to avoid runaway costs. Estimate: 1 paragraph ~ 80–120 tokens, 1 page ~ 600–800 tokens.
Stop Sequences	Up to 4 strings	None	Generation halts when any stop sequence is emitted.	Use ["\n\n"] for single-paragraph answers. Use ["```"] to stop after a code block.
Seed	Any integer	None	When set, the service attempts deterministic output (best-effort).	Use for reproducible evaluations and regression testing. Same seed + same prompt + same parameters = same output (mostly).
Response Format	text, json_object, json_schema	text	Forces structured output format.	Use json_schema for reliable structured extraction. Always include "respond in JSON" in the prompt when using json_object.
N	1 – 128	1	Number of completions to generate per request.	Use n > 1 only for ranking/voting strategies. Multiplies token cost linearly.
Logprobs	true/false, top_logprobs 0–20	false	Returns log-probabilities for each output token.	Use for confidence scoring, calibration, and classification thresholds.
Logit Bias	Token ID → bias (-100 to 100)	{}	Directly adjusts probability of specific tokens. -100 = ban token.	Ban unwanted tokens (e.g., profanity token IDs). Use sparingly — hard to maintain.

Parameter Interaction Quick Rules

Scenario	Temperature	Top-P	Freq. Penalty	Presence Penalty
Deterministic extraction	0.0	1.0	0.0	0.0
Conversational chatbot	0.7	0.95	0.3	0.3
Creative writing	1.0	0.95	0.5	0.6
Code generation	0.2	0.95	0.0	0.0
Brainstorming / ideation	1.2	1.0	0.8	0.8
Summarization	0.3	0.95	0.0	0.0
Translation	0.3	0.95	0.0	0.0
Customer support bot	0.5	0.9	0.4	0.2

Common API Call Patterns

Python (Azure OpenAI SDK) — Minimal call:

from openai import AzureOpenAI
client = AzureOpenAI(
    azure_endpoint="https://<resource>.openai.azure.com/",
    api_key="<key>",            # or use DefaultAzureCredential
    api_version="2025-03-01-preview"
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="<deployment-name>",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    temperature=0.7,
    max_tokens=800
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Key API versions (Azure OpenAI):

API Version	Status	Notes
2025-03-01-preview	Latest preview	Newest features
2024-12-01-preview	Preview	Structured outputs, reasoning
2024-10-21	GA (stable)	Production recommended
2024-06-01	GA	Broadly supported

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Card 2: Token Quick Reference

What Is a Token?

Fact	Value
Average token length (English)	~4 characters
Tokens per word (English avg.)	~1.33 tokens per word (~0.75 words per token)
Tokens per word (code)	~2–3 tokens per word (symbols split aggressively)
Tokens per word (non-Latin scripts)	~2–4 tokens per character for CJK languages

Token Estimation Formulas

English text:   tokens ≈ word_count × 1.33
Code:           tokens ≈ character_count ÷ 3
Mixed content:  tokens ≈ character_count ÷ 4

Common Text Lengths in Tokens

Content Type	Approximate Tokens
A short email (3–4 sentences)	~100–200
One A4 page of text	~600–800
A long blog post (2,000 words)	~2,700
A technical whitepaper (10 pages)	~7,000–9,000
A full novel (80,000 words)	~107,000
1 hour of transcribed speech	~8,000–10,000
A typical Slack conversation (50 messages)	~2,000–3,000
JSON payload (1 KB)	~300–400
A complete React component file	~500–1,500

Context Windows by Model (March 2026)

Model	Provider	Context Window	Max Output Tokens
GPT-4.1	Azure OpenAI	1,047,576 (1M)	32,768
GPT-4.1 mini	Azure OpenAI	1,047,576 (1M)	32,768
GPT-4.1 nano	Azure OpenAI	1,047,576 (1M)	32,768
GPT-4o	Azure OpenAI	128,000	16,384
GPT-4o mini	Azure OpenAI	128,000	16,384
o3	Azure OpenAI	200,000	100,000
o4-mini	Azure OpenAI	200,000	100,000
o3-mini	Azure OpenAI	200,000	100,000
o1	Azure OpenAI	200,000	100,000
Claude Opus 4	Anthropic	200,000	32,000
Claude Sonnet 4	Anthropic	200,000	64,000
Gemini 2.5 Pro	Google	1,048,576 (1M)	65,536
Gemini 2.5 Flash	Google	1,048,576 (1M)	65,536
Llama 4 Maverick	Meta (via Azure)	1,048,576 (1M)	32,768
DeepSeek-R1	DeepSeek (via Azure)	128,000	16,384
Mistral Large	Mistral (via Azure)	128,000	8,192
Phi-4	Microsoft	16,384	4,096
Phi-4-mini	Microsoft	128,000	4,096

Azure OpenAI Pricing (Pay-As-You-Go, per 1M Tokens)

Prices reflect Global Standard deployment where available. Check the Azure OpenAI pricing page for latest values.

Model	Input (per 1M tokens)	Output (per 1M tokens)
GPT-4.1	$2.00	$8.00
GPT-4.1 mini	$0.40	$1.60
GPT-4.1 nano	$0.10	$0.40
GPT-4o	$2.50	$10.00
GPT-4o mini	$0.15	$0.60
o3	$10.00	$40.00
o4-mini	$1.10	$4.40
o3-mini	$1.10	$4.40
text-embedding-3-large	$0.13	—
text-embedding-3-small	$0.02	—
DALL-E 3 (Standard)	$0.040 / image	—
DALL-E 3 (HD)	$0.080 / image	—
Whisper	$0.36 / audio hour	—

Global Batch Pricing (50% Discount)

Model	Input (per 1M tokens)	Output (per 1M tokens)
GPT-4.1	$1.00	$4.00
GPT-4.1 mini	$0.20	$0.80
GPT-4o	$1.25	$5.00
GPT-4o mini	$0.075	$0.30

Cost rule of thumb: For a typical chatbot conversation (~1,500 input + 500 output tokens), GPT-4.1 nano costs ~$0.0004 per turn. GPT-4o costs ~$0.009 per turn. That is a ~20x difference.

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Card 3: Model Selection Decision Tree

Use this table to pick the right model for your workload. Start from the need.

Need	Recommended Model	Why	Fallback
Simple classification / routing	GPT-4.1 nano	Cheapest, fastest, sufficient for binary/multi-class	GPT-4o mini
Structured data extraction	GPT-4.1 mini	Great JSON mode, cost efficient	GPT-4.1
General-purpose chatbot	GPT-4o	Strong general ability, broad knowledge	GPT-4.1
Complex multi-step reasoning	o3	Deep chain-of-thought, highest reasoning accuracy	o4-mini
Reasoning on a budget	o4-mini	80% of o3 capability at ~10% cost	o3-mini
Code generation & review	GPT-4.1	Optimized for code, instruction following	o4-mini
Long document analysis (>100K)	GPT-4.1	1M context window, strong recall	Gemini 2.5 Pro
Vision / image understanding	GPT-4o	Native multimodal, strong vision	GPT-4.1 (vision)
Embeddings	text-embedding-3-large	Best quality Azure embedding	text-embedding-3-small
On-device / edge	Phi-4-mini	Small footprint, strong for size	Phi-4
Open-source self-hosted	Llama 4 Maverick	Strong open model, permissive license	DeepSeek-R1
Batch processing (non-real-time)	GPT-4o (Global Batch)	50% price discount for async	GPT-4.1 mini (Batch)
Audio transcription	Whisper	Purpose-built speech-to-text	Azure AI Speech
Text-to-speech	Azure AI Speech / GPT-4o Audio	High quality neural voices	—
Image generation	DALL-E 3 / GPT Image Gen	Native Azure integration	—

Decision Flowchart (Text)

START
  |
  ├─ Need reasoning/math/logic?
  |    ├─ Budget sensitive? → o4-mini
  |    └─ Maximum accuracy?  → o3
  |
  ├─ Need code generation?
  |    └─ → GPT-4.1
  |
  ├─ Need vision/images?
  |    └─ → GPT-4o
  |
  ├─ Simple task (classify, extract, route)?
  |    ├─ High volume? → GPT-4.1 nano
  |    └─ Moderate quality needed? → GPT-4.1 mini
  |
  ├─ Long context (>128K)?
  |    └─ → GPT-4.1 (1M context)
  |
  └─ General conversational?
       └─ → GPT-4o or GPT-4.1

Model Capabilities Matrix

Capability	GPT-4.1	GPT-4.1 mini	GPT-4.1 nano	GPT-4o	GPT-4o mini	o3	o4-mini
Text generation	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Excellent	Good	Excellent	Very Good
Code generation	Excellent	Good	Fair	Very Good	Good	Excellent	Very Good
Reasoning / math	Very Good	Good	Fair	Good	Fair	Excellent	Very Good
Vision / images	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Structured output	Excellent	Excellent	Very Good	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Good
Instruction following	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Very Good	Good	Very Good	Good
Long context (>100K)	Excellent (1M)	Excellent (1M)	Good (1M)	Good (128K)	Good (128K)	Good (200K)	Good (200K)
Multilingual	Very Good	Good	Fair	Very Good	Good	Good	Good
Speed (tokens/sec)	Fast	Very Fast	Fastest	Fast	Very Fast	Slower (thinks)	Moderate
Function calling	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Excellent	Good	Good	Good

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Card 4: RAG Architecture Cheat Sheet

Chunking Strategies Comparison

Strategy	Chunk Size	Overlap	Best For	Drawbacks
Fixed-size	512–1024 tokens	10–20%	Simple docs, uniform structure	Breaks mid-sentence
Sentence-based	3–5 sentences	1 sentence	Articles, natural prose	Inconsistent chunk sizes
Paragraph-based	1 paragraph	None or 1 sentence	Well-structured docs	Large variance in size
Recursive character	512–1024 tokens	10–20%	General-purpose (LangChain default)	May split semantic units
Semantic chunking	Variable	Embedding-based boundaries	Research papers, mixed content	Slower, requires embeddings
Markdown/HTML-aware	By heading	None	Technical docs, wikis	Requires structured source
Sliding window	256–512 tokens	50%	Dense retrieval, high recall	2x storage, more chunks
Document-level	Entire doc	N/A	Short docs (< 1 page)	Poor for long documents

Rule of thumb: Start with 512 tokens, 10% overlap, recursive character splitting. Optimize from there.

Document Pre-Processing Pipeline

Source Documents
  │
  ├─ PDF → Extract text (PyMuPDF, Azure Document Intelligence)
  ├─ Word/PPTX → Extract text (python-docx, python-pptx)
  ├─ HTML → Strip tags, keep structure (BeautifulSoup)
  ├─ Markdown → Parse headings as section boundaries
  └─ Scanned images → OCR (Azure Document Intelligence)
  │
  ▼
Clean & Normalize
  │ Remove headers/footers, fix encoding, normalize whitespace
  ▼
Chunk
  │ Apply chunking strategy (see table above)
  ▼
Enrich (optional)
  │ Add metadata: title, source, page, section, date
  │ Generate summaries or hypothetical questions per chunk
  ▼
Embed
  │ Generate vector embeddings for each chunk
  ▼
Index
  │ Upload to Azure AI Search (or other vector store)
  │ Configure vector fields, filterable metadata, semantic config
  ▼
Ready for Retrieval

Embedding Models Comparison

Model	Dimensions	Max Tokens	Relative Quality	Cost (per 1M tokens)	Notes
text-embedding-3-large	3,072 (configurable)	8,191	Highest	$0.13	Supports dimension reduction via dimensions param
text-embedding-3-small	1,536 (configurable)	8,191	High	$0.02	Best price/quality ratio
text-embedding-ada-002	1,536	8,191	Good	$0.10	Legacy — migrate to v3
Cohere Embed v3	1,024	512	High	Varies	Multi-language strength
E5-large-v2	1,024	512	Good	Self-hosted	Open-source, no API cost
BGE-large-en-v1.5	1,024	512	Good	Self-hosted	Open-source, MTEB top-tier

Retrieval Strategy Comparison

Strategy	How It Works	Precision	Recall	Latency	When to Use
Vector search	Embed query, find nearest neighbors	Medium-High	High	Low	Default starting point
Full-text / keyword (BM25)	Term frequency matching	High	Medium	Very Low	Exact term matching, codes, IDs
Hybrid (vector + keyword)	Combines both, fused ranking (RRF)	High	High	Low-Medium	Recommended default for production
Semantic ranker (L2 rerank)	Cross-encoder reranks top-N results	Very High	Depends on Stage 1	Medium	When precision matters most
Multi-query	LLM rewrites query N ways, merges results	High	Very High	Higher	Ambiguous or complex queries
HyDE	LLM generates hypothetical doc, then searches	High	High	Higher	When queries differ from document style

Azure AI Search Tiers

Tier	Price (approx/month)	Storage	Indexes	Replicas	Partitions	Semantic Ranker	Vector Search
Free	$0	50 MB	3	1	1	No	Yes (limited)
Basic	~$75	2 GB	15	3	1	Yes	Yes
Standard S1	~$250	25 GB per partition	50	12	12	Yes	Yes
Standard S2	~$1,000	100 GB per partition	200	12	12	Yes	Yes
Standard S3	~$2,000	200 GB per partition	200	12	12	Yes	Yes
Storage Optimized L1	~$2,500	1 TB per partition	10	12	12	Yes	Yes
Storage Optimized L2	~$5,000	2 TB per partition	10	12	12	Yes	Yes

RAG Evaluation Metrics

Metric	What It Measures	Target	How to Calculate
Groundedness	Are answers supported by retrieved context?	> 4.0 / 5.0	LLM-as-judge or NLI model
Relevance	Is the answer relevant to the question?	> 4.0 / 5.0	LLM-as-judge
Coherence	Is the answer well-structured and logical?	> 4.0 / 5.0	LLM-as-judge
Fluency	Is the language natural and grammatical?	> 4.0 / 5.0	LLM-as-judge
Retrieval Precision	Are retrieved chunks relevant?	> 0.7	Manual label or LLM-judge top-K
Retrieval Recall	Are all relevant chunks retrieved?	> 0.8	Requires ground truth annotations
NDCG@K	Quality of ranking in top K results	> 0.7	Standard IR formula
Answer Similarity	Closeness to ground truth answer	> 0.8	Cosine similarity of embeddings
Faithfulness	No hallucinated facts beyond context	> 0.9	Claim-level verification

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Card 5: Azure AI Foundry Deployment Types

Property	Standard	Global Standard	Data Zone Standard	Provisioned (PTU)	Global Batch
Pricing model	Pay-per-token	Pay-per-token	Pay-per-token	Reserved throughput (PTU/hr)	Pay-per-token (50% discount)
Latency	Low	Low (optimized routing)	Low	Lowest (guaranteed)	High (async, up to 24h)
Data residency	Single region	Traffic routed globally	Within data zone (US/EU)	Single region	Traffic routed globally
Data processing	In-region	May process in any region	US or EU zone	In-region	May process in any region
Rate limits	Per-deployment TPM	Higher TPM quotas	Per-deployment TPM	Determined by PTU count	Very high (batch queue)
SLA	99.9%	99.9%	99.9%	99.9%	Best-effort (24h target)
Min commitment	None	None	None	1-month or 1-hour reservation	None
Best for	Dev/test, moderate prod	High-scale prod, cost optimization	EU/US data residency requirements	Predictable high-throughput prod	Bulk scoring, evaluations, embeddings
Supported models	Most models	GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o-series	GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o-series	GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o-series	GPT-4o, GPT-4.1

PTU Sizing Quick Reference

Model	Approx. Tokens per Minute per PTU	Typical PTU for 100 chat users
GPT-4o	~2,500 TPM	50–80 PTU
GPT-4.1	~2,500 TPM	50–80 PTU
GPT-4o mini	~7,500 TPM	15–25 PTU

Break-even rule of thumb: If your monthly PAYG bill exceeds ~$5,000 for a single deployment, evaluate PTU pricing. PTU becomes cost-effective at sustained utilization above 60-70%.

Default Quota Limits (Tokens Per Minute)

Default quotas per subscription per region. Can be increased via support request.

Model	Default TPM (Standard)	Default TPM (Global Standard)	Max RPM
GPT-4.1	450K	2M	2,700
GPT-4.1 mini	2M	10M	12,000
GPT-4.1 nano	2M	10M	12,000
GPT-4o	450K	2M	2,700
GPT-4o mini	2M	10M	12,000
o3	100K	500K	600
o4-mini	450K	2M	2,700

Quota tip: Use Global Standard deployments for higher default TPM limits. Request quota increases via Azure Portal > Azure OpenAI > Quotas.

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Card 6: Prompt Engineering Patterns

Pattern	When to Use	Template	Expected Improvement
Zero-shot	Simple, well-defined tasks	Classify this text as positive or negative: {text}	Baseline
Few-shot	When examples clarify the expected format/logic	Here are examples:\nInput: X → Output: Y\nInput: A → Output: B\nNow: Input: {text} → Output:	+10–25% accuracy
Chain-of-Thought (CoT)	Multi-step reasoning, math, logic	Solve step by step:\n{problem}\nLet's think through this:	+15–40% on reasoning tasks
Zero-shot CoT	Quick reasoning boost, no examples needed	{question}\nLet's think step by step.	+10–20% on reasoning tasks
ReAct	Tasks requiring external tools/actions	Think: {reasoning}\nAction: {tool_call}\nObservation: {result}\nThink: ...	Enables tool use reliably
Role / System Prompt	Setting persona, behavior constraints	You are a {role}. You always {constraint}. You never {restriction}.	Consistent tone and behavior
Self-consistency	High-stakes reasoning (run N times, majority vote)	Run CoT N times → pick most common answer	+5–15% on reasoning
Tree-of-Thought	Complex problem solving with branching paths	Generate multiple approaches → evaluate each → select best	+20–30% on complex planning
Structured Output	When you need predictable JSON/XML	Respond in JSON matching this schema: {schema} + response_format: json_schema	Near 100% format compliance
Decomposition	Break a hard task into subtasks	First: {subtask1}\nThen: {subtask2}\nFinally: {subtask3}	Reduces errors on complex tasks
Meta-prompting	When you want the LLM to write its own prompt	Write the optimal prompt for: {task_description}	Variable — good for prompt iteration
Retrieval-augmented	When current/private knowledge is needed	Context:\n{retrieved_docs}\n\nUsing ONLY the context above, answer: {question}	Reduces hallucination dramatically

Prompt Structure Best Practice

[SYSTEM]
You are {role}. {behavioral constraints}. {output format}.

[USER]
## Context
{background information or retrieved documents}

## Task
{clear, specific instruction}

## Constraints
- {constraint 1}
- {constraint 2}

## Output Format
{expected structure}

## Examples (if few-shot)
Input: ... → Output: ...

Common Prompt Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Problem	Fix
Vague instructions	"Do something with this data" → unpredictable output	Be specific: "Extract all dates and amounts from this invoice"
Conflicting constraints	"Be brief but include all details" → model oscillates	Prioritize: "Summarize in 3 bullet points. Include dollar amounts."
No output format	Response structure varies per call	Specify format: "Respond as JSON with keys: name, date, amount"
Prompt injection vulnerability	User input not delimited → hijack risk	Wrap user input in clear delimiters: """User message: {input}"""
Token waste in system prompt	2,000-token system prompt on a classification task	Keep system prompts proportional to task complexity
Examples that contradict rules	Few-shot examples violate stated constraints	Audit examples against constraints before deploying
Asking multi-model questions	"Is this positive sentiment and extract the entities" → lower accuracy	Split into separate calls or use clear sub-sections

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Card 7: Agent Framework Comparison

Feature	Azure AI Agent Service	AutoGen	Semantic Kernel	Copilot Studio
Type	Managed cloud service	Open-source framework	Open-source SDK	Low-code platform
Languages	Python, C#, JavaScript (REST)	Python, .NET	Python, C#, Java	No-code / low-code
Where it runs	Azure (fully managed)	Self-hosted (any infra)	Self-hosted (any infra)	Microsoft Cloud (managed)
Tool / function calling	Built-in (code interpreter, file search, Azure Functions, API)	Custom tool definitions	Plugin architecture (native + OpenAPI)	Connectors, Power Automate flows
Multi-agent	Orchestrated via threads	First-class multi-agent conversations	Experimental multi-agent	Single-agent (can call sub-flows)
Memory / state	Managed threads with file/vector store	Configurable memory backends	Chat history + plugin state	Conversation context (managed)
Knowledge / RAG	Built-in file search (vector store)	Custom RAG integration	Built-in text search plugin	Built-in knowledge sources (Dataverse, SharePoint, websites)
Enterprise security	Azure RBAC, managed identity, VNET	Bring your own	Bring your own	Microsoft Entra ID, DLP, environments
Observability	Azure Monitor, Application Insights	Custom logging, AutoGen Studio	Custom logging	Built-in analytics dashboard
Best for	Production AI agents on Azure	Research, complex multi-agent workflows	Integrating AI into existing apps	Business users, citizen developers, rapid prototyping
Learning curve	Medium	Medium-High	Medium	Low
Cost model	Pay-per-use (Azure resources)	Infrastructure only	Infrastructure only	Per-user licensing

When to Use Which

Scenario	Recommended
Enterprise chatbot with managed infra	Azure AI Agent Service
Multi-agent research or simulation	AutoGen
Adding AI to existing .NET/Java/Python app	Semantic Kernel
Business process automation by non-developers	Copilot Studio
Quick prototype with tool calling	Azure AI Agent Service
Full control over agent behavior and routing	AutoGen

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Card 8: AI Infrastructure Sizing

GPU VRAM Requirements by Model Size

Model Parameters	FP16 VRAM	INT8 VRAM	INT4 (GPTQ/AWQ) VRAM	Example Models
1–3B	4–6 GB	2–3 GB	1–2 GB	Phi-4-mini, Gemma-3 1B
7–8B	14–16 GB	7–8 GB	4–5 GB	Llama 3.1 8B, Mistral 7B
13–14B	26–28 GB	13–14 GB	7–8 GB	Llama 3.1 13B (hypothetical), CodeLlama 13B
34B	68 GB	34 GB	18–20 GB	CodeLlama 34B
70B	140 GB	70 GB	36–40 GB	Llama 3.1 70B
405B	810 GB	405 GB	~200 GB	Llama 3.1 405B
MoE (e.g., Mixtral 8x22B)	~280 GB	~140 GB	~72 GB	Mixtral 8x22B

Formula: VRAM (GB) ≈ Parameters (B) x Bytes per parameter. FP16 = 2 bytes. INT8 = 1 byte. INT4 = 0.5 bytes. Add ~20% overhead for KV cache and runtime.

Azure GPU VM Comparison

VM Series	GPU	GPU Count	GPU VRAM (total)	vCPUs	RAM (GB)	Approx. Price/hr	Best For
NC4as T4 v3	T4	1	16 GB	4	28	~$0.53	Dev/test, small model inference
NC24ads A100 v4	A100 80GB	1	80 GB	24	220	~$3.67	Single-GPU training, 70B inference (quantized)
NC48ads A100 v4	A100 80GB	2	160 GB	48	440	~$7.35	70B FP16 inference, medium training
NC96ads A100 v4	A100 80GB	4	320 GB	96	880	~$14.69	Large model training, 405B quantized inference
ND96asr v4	A100 80GB	8	640 GB	96	900	~$27.20	Distributed training, multi-GPU inference
ND96isr H100 v5	H100 80GB	8	640 GB	96	900	~$36.00	Cutting-edge training, fastest inference
NVadsA10 v5	A10	1	24 GB	6–72	55–880	~$0.45–$5.00	Graphics + inference hybrid

PTU vs. PAYG Break-Even Reference

Monthly PAYG cost       = (input_tokens × input_price) + (output_tokens × output_price)
Monthly PTU cost        = PTU_count × PTU_hourly_rate × 730 hours
Break-even utilization  ≈ 60–70% sustained

Quick check:
  If monthly PAYG spend > $5,000/deployment → evaluate PTU
  If monthly PAYG spend > $15,000/deployment → PTU almost certainly cheaper

Azure AI Search Sizing Recommendations

Workload Profile	Documents	Vectors	Recommended Tier	Replicas	Partitions
Prototype	< 10K	< 1M	Free or Basic	1	1
Small production	10K–100K	1M–10M	Basic or S1	2	1
Medium production	100K–1M	10M–50M	S1 or S2	3	2–3
Large production	1M–10M	50M–500M	S2 or S3	3–6	3–6
Enterprise / big data	> 10M	> 500M	L1 or L2	6–12	6–12

High-availability rule: Always use >= 2 replicas for production SLA (99.9% for reads). Use >= 3 replicas for 99.9% read+write SLA.

Monthly Cost Estimation Formulas

Azure OpenAI (PAYG):

Monthly cost = (avg_input_tokens_per_request × requests_per_day × 30 × input_price_per_token)
             + (avg_output_tokens_per_request × requests_per_day × 30 × output_price_per_token)

Example: GPT-4.1 mini, 10K requests/day, 1,500 input + 500 output tokens each:
  Input:  1,500 × 10,000 × 30 × ($0.40 / 1,000,000) = $180/month
  Output:   500 × 10,000 × 30 × ($1.60 / 1,000,000) = $240/month
  Total: $420/month

Azure AI Search:

Monthly cost = service_tier_base_price × partitions × replicas
             + semantic_ranker_queries × $0.01 per 1,000 queries (if S1+)

Example: S1 with 2 replicas, 1 partition:
  $250 × 1 × 2 = $500/month (+ semantic ranker usage)

Embedding indexing (one-time):

Embedding cost = total_chunks × avg_tokens_per_chunk × price_per_token

Example: 100K chunks, 400 tokens avg, text-embedding-3-small:
  100,000 × 400 × ($0.02 / 1,000,000) = $0.80 total

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Card 9: Responsible AI Checklist

Pre-Deployment Checklist

#	Category	Check	Status
1	Purpose	Documented intended use case and users	☐
2	Purpose	Identified out-of-scope uses	☐
3	Fairness	Tested across demographic groups	☐
4	Fairness	Checked for disparate performance or bias	☐
5	Reliability	Evaluated on diverse test set (> 200 samples)	☐
6	Reliability	Measured hallucination / groundedness rate	☐
7	Reliability	Conducted red-team / adversarial testing	☐
8	Safety	Azure AI Content Safety filters configured	☐
9	Safety	Jailbreak resistance tested	☐
10	Privacy	No PII in training data / prompts without consent	☐
11	Privacy	Data handling complies with GDPR/regional laws	☐
12	Transparency	Users informed they're interacting with AI	☐
13	Transparency	AI-generated content is labeled	☐
14	Transparency	System card / documentation written	☐
15	Accountability	Human escalation path exists	☐
16	Accountability	Monitoring and logging enabled	☐
17	Accountability	Incident response plan documented	☐
18	Security	API keys in Azure Key Vault, not in code	☐
19	Security	Managed Identity used for service-to-service auth	☐
20	Security	Network isolation (VNET/Private Endpoints) configured	☐

Azure AI Content Safety — Filter Categories

Category	What It Detects	Severity Levels	Default Setting
Hate & Fairness	Hate speech, discrimination, slurs	Low, Medium, High	Block Medium + High
Sexual	Sexually explicit content	Low, Medium, High	Block Medium + High
Violence	Violent content, graphic descriptions	Low, Medium, High	Block Medium + High
Self-Harm	Self-harm instructions or glorification	Low, Medium, High	Block Medium + High
Jailbreak (Prompt Shield)	Prompt injection, jailbreak attempts	Detected / Not Detected	Enabled
Protected Material	Copyrighted text, code licenses	Detected / Not Detected	Enabled
Groundedness Detection	Hallucinated or ungrounded claims	Grounded / Ungrounded	Available (opt-in)

Required Evaluations Before Production

Evaluation	Minimum Standard	Tool
Groundedness	> 4.0 / 5.0 on test set	Azure AI Evaluation SDK
Relevance	> 4.0 / 5.0 on test set	Azure AI Evaluation SDK
Red-team testing	No critical jailbreaks pass	Microsoft PyRIT / manual
Latency P95	< application SLA (e.g., 5s)	Application Insights
Toxicity rate	< 0.1% of responses	Content Safety API
Bias audit	No statistical disparity > 5% across groups	Fairlearn / manual

Security Checklist for AI Workloads

Layer	Requirement	Azure Service
Identity	Managed Identity for all AI services	Entra ID / Managed Identity
Network	Private Endpoints for AI services	Azure Private Link
Secrets	API keys in Key Vault	Azure Key Vault
Data	Encryption at rest and in transit	Azure default (AES-256, TLS 1.2+)
Access control	RBAC on AI resource operations	Azure RBAC (Cognitive Services User, etc.)
Logging	Diagnostic logs to Log Analytics	Azure Monitor
Compliance	AI services in compliant region	Azure compliance documentation
Content	Content filters enabled on all deployments	Azure AI Content Safety

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Card 10: Microsoft Copilot Ecosystem Map

Copilot	What It Does	Audience	Licensing / Cost	Key Feature
Microsoft 365 Copilot	AI assist in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams	Enterprise knowledge workers	$30/user/month add-on	Grounded in Microsoft Graph (your emails, docs, meetings)
Copilot in Windows	OS-level assistant for PC tasks, web search, file finding	All Windows users	Free (basic) / Copilot+ PC features	Deep OS integration, local model on Copilot+ PCs
GitHub Copilot	AI code completion, chat, code review, agents in IDE	Developers	$10–$39/user/month	Multi-file editing, agent mode, workspace context
Copilot Studio	Build custom copilots / chatbots with low-code tools	Citizen devs, IT admins	Included in some M365 plans / per-message	Generative AI + topics + connectors
Copilot for Azure	AI assistant for Azure portal (diagnose, troubleshoot, create)	Azure admins & engineers	Free (in preview for most)	Natural language to Azure CLI/ARM, resource diagnostics
Copilot for Security	Investigate threats, summarize incidents, reverse-eng malware	SecOps analysts	Standalone: $4/secured compute unit/hr	Grounded in Microsoft Threat Intelligence
Copilot in Power Platform	AI in Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI	Makers, analysts	Included in Power Platform licenses	Natural language to app, flow, or DAX formula
Copilot in Dynamics 365	AI assist across Sales, Service, Finance, Supply Chain	Business users	Included in Dynamics 365 licenses	Contextual to each Dynamics 365 module
Copilot in Fabric	AI for data engineering, data science, and analytics	Data professionals	Included with Fabric capacity	Natural language to SQL/KQL, auto-insights
Copilot for Sales	Summarize CRM data, draft emails, meeting prep	Salespeople	$50/user/month or with M365 Copilot	CRM integration (Dynamics 365 + Salesforce)
Copilot for Service	Summarize cases, draft replies, search knowledge bases	Support agents	$50/user/month or with M365 Copilot	Multi-source knowledge grounding
Copilot for Finance	Excel-heavy financial workflows, variance analysis	Finance teams	$30/user/month	Automated reconciliation, variance explanations

Azure AI Services Quick Map

Beyond Copilots and OpenAI, Azure offers specialized AI services:

Service	What It Does	Common Use Cases
Azure OpenAI Service	Host GPT, o-series, DALL-E, Whisper models	Chatbots, content generation, code assist
Azure AI Search	Vector + keyword + semantic search	RAG retrieval, enterprise search, e-commerce
Azure AI Document Intelligence	Extract text, tables, key-value pairs from documents	Invoice processing, form extraction, ID scanning
Azure AI Speech	Speech-to-text, text-to-speech, translation, speaker recognition	Call center analytics, accessibility, voice UX
Azure AI Vision	Image analysis, OCR, face detection, custom models	Product inspection, accessibility, content moderation
Azure AI Language	NER, sentiment analysis, summarization, PII detection	Text analytics, compliance, customer feedback
Azure AI Translator	Real-time text and document translation (100+ languages)	Multilingual apps, document localization
Azure AI Content Safety	Detect harmful content in text and images	Moderation pipelines, UGC platforms
Azure Machine Learning	Full ML lifecycle: train, deploy, manage models	Custom ML models, MLOps pipelines, AutoML
Azure AI Foundry	Unified AI development platform	End-to-end AI app development, evaluation, deployment

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Card 11: AI Acronym & Term Glossary

A comprehensive A-Z reference of terms an AI and infrastructure architect encounters daily.

#	Term	Full Form / Definition
1	AGI	Artificial General Intelligence — hypothetical AI with human-level general reasoning across all domains.
2	AI Search	Azure AI Search — Microsoft's managed search service with vector, keyword, and semantic ranking capabilities.
3	BERT	Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers — foundational encoder model for NLP tasks (classification, NER).
4	BM25	Best Matching 25 — classic probabilistic ranking algorithm for keyword/full-text search.
5	CoT	Chain-of-Thought — prompting technique that asks the model to reason step-by-step before answering.
6	CUDA	Compute Unified Device Architecture — NVIDIA's parallel computing platform for GPU programming.
7	DAG	Directed Acyclic Graph — used in ML pipelines and agent orchestration to define task dependencies.
8	DPO	Direct Preference Optimization — alignment technique that fine-tunes LLMs using human preference pairs without a separate reward model.
9	Embedding	A dense vector representation of text (or images/audio) in a continuous vector space where semantic similarity maps to geometric proximity.
10	Fine-tuning	Continued training of a pre-trained model on a domain-specific dataset to improve performance on specialized tasks.
11	FP16 / BF16	16-bit floating point formats used in GPU training and inference to reduce memory while maintaining precision.
12	Function Calling	LLM capability to output structured JSON matching a tool/function schema, enabling the model to invoke external APIs.
13	GGUF	GPT-Generated Unified Format — file format for quantized models used by llama.cpp and other local inference engines.
14	GPT	Generative Pre-trained Transformer — autoregressive language model architecture.
15	Grounding	Connecting LLM responses to verified data sources (RAG, search results, databases) to reduce hallucination.
16	Guardrails	Safety mechanisms (content filters, input/output validation, topic restrictions) that constrain AI system behavior.
17	Hallucination	When an LLM generates plausible-sounding but factually incorrect or fabricated information.
18	HNSW	Hierarchical Navigable Small World — graph-based algorithm for approximate nearest-neighbor vector search. Used in Azure AI Search.
19	Inference	The process of running a trained model to generate predictions/outputs from new inputs. Contrast with training.
20	INT4 / INT8	4-bit / 8-bit integer quantization — reduces model size and VRAM usage at the cost of slight accuracy loss.
21	JSON Mode	Azure OpenAI feature that forces the model to return valid JSON. Use json_schema for strict schema adherence.
22	KV Cache	Key-Value Cache — stores attention key/value pairs from previous tokens to avoid recomputation during autoregressive generation. Dominates VRAM during long-context inference.
23	LoRA	Low-Rank Adaptation — parameter-efficient fine-tuning method that trains small rank-decomposition matrices instead of full weights.
24	LLM	Large Language Model — transformer-based models with billions of parameters trained on massive text corpora.
25	MCP	Model Context Protocol — open protocol for connecting LLMs to external data sources and tools via a standardized interface.
26	MoE	Mixture of Experts — architecture where only a subset of model parameters activate per token, improving efficiency.
27	NDCG	Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain — ranking quality metric used in search evaluation. Range 0–1, higher is better.
28	NER	Named Entity Recognition — extracting structured entities (people, places, organizations) from text.
29	ONNX	Open Neural Network Exchange — open format for representing ML models, enabling cross-framework portability.
30	PEFT	Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning — umbrella term for methods (LoRA, QLoRA, adapters) that fine-tune a small subset of parameters.
31	PPO	Proximal Policy Optimization — reinforcement learning algorithm used in RLHF to align LLMs with human preferences.
32	Prompt Injection	Adversarial attack where malicious input in a prompt attempts to override the model's system instructions.
33	PTU	Provisioned Throughput Unit — Azure OpenAI's reserved capacity pricing model for guaranteed throughput.
34	QLoRA	Quantized LoRA — combines 4-bit quantization with LoRA for fine-tuning large models on consumer GPUs.
35	Quantization	Reducing model weight precision (e.g., FP16 → INT4) to shrink model size and speed up inference.
36	RAG	Retrieval-Augmented Generation — architecture that retrieves relevant documents and includes them in the LLM context before generation.
37	RBAC	Role-Based Access Control — security model where permissions are assigned to roles, used throughout Azure AI services.
38	Reasoning Models	LLMs that use internal chain-of-thought (thinking tokens) before answering. Azure examples: o3, o4-mini, o3-mini.
39	RLHF	Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback — alignment method using human preference rankings to train a reward model that guides LLM fine-tuning.
40	RRF	Reciprocal Rank Fusion — algorithm for merging ranked results from multiple retrieval methods (used in hybrid search).
41	Semantic Kernel	Microsoft's open-source SDK for integrating AI models into applications. Supports plugins, planners, and memory.
42	SFT	Supervised Fine-Tuning — fine-tuning on labeled instruction-response pairs. First step before RLHF alignment.
43	SLM	Small Language Model — models under ~4B parameters designed for efficiency and on-device deployment (e.g., Phi-4-mini).
44	SoTA	State of the Art — the current best-known performance on a benchmark or task.
45	System Prompt	Instructions placed in the system message to define model behavior, persona, constraints, and output format.
46	Temperature	Generation parameter controlling output randomness. 0 = deterministic, higher = more random.
47	Tokenizer	Algorithm that splits text into tokens (subword units). Different models use different tokenizers (BPE, SentencePiece, etc.).
48	Top-P	Nucleus sampling — limits token selection to the smallest set whose cumulative probability >= P.
49	TPM	Tokens Per Minute — Azure OpenAI rate limit unit. Quota is allocated in TPM per deployment.
50	Transformer	Neural network architecture based on self-attention. Foundation of all modern LLMs.
51	Upsampling	Increasing resolution or representation quality. In AI data: generating synthetic examples to balance datasets.
52	vLLM	Open-source high-throughput LLM serving engine. Uses PagedAttention for efficient KV cache management.
53	Vector Database	Database optimized for storing and querying high-dimensional embedding vectors (Azure AI Search, Pinecone, Qdrant, etc.).
54	Vector Search	Finding similar items by computing distance (cosine, dot product, L2) between embedding vectors.
55	VNET Integration	Deploying Azure AI services within a Virtual Network for network isolation and private connectivity.
56	WASM	WebAssembly — used in edge AI to run inference models in browsers or edge runtimes without native compilation.
57	XAI	Explainable AI — methods and tools for understanding and interpreting AI model decisions (SHAP, LIME, attention visualization).
58	Zero-shot	Asking a model to perform a task without any examples — relying on pre-trained knowledge alone.
59	Few-shot	Providing a small number of examples in the prompt to guide the model's output format and behavior.
60	Agentic AI	AI systems that can autonomously plan, use tools, and take multi-step actions to complete goals.
61	Attention	Core mechanism in transformers that lets tokens attend to (weight) all other tokens in the sequence. Self-attention enables contextual understanding.
62	BPE	Byte Pair Encoding — tokenization algorithm used by GPT models. Iteratively merges frequent character pairs into tokens.
63	Chunking	Splitting documents into smaller segments for indexing and retrieval in RAG pipelines.
64	Content Safety	Azure AI Content Safety — service for detecting harmful content (hate, violence, sexual, self-harm) in text and images.
65	Cross-encoder	Model that takes a query-document pair as input and outputs a relevance score. More accurate than bi-encoder but slower. Used for reranking.
66	Distillation	Training a smaller (student) model to mimic a larger (teacher) model's outputs. Produces efficient models for deployment.
67	Document Intelligence	Azure AI Document Intelligence — service for extracting text, tables, and structure from PDFs, forms, and images.
68	Eval / Evaluation	Systematic measurement of AI system quality using metrics (groundedness, relevance, etc.) and test datasets.
69	Foundry	Azure AI Foundry — Microsoft's unified platform for building, evaluating, and deploying AI applications.
70	GAN	Generative Adversarial Network — architecture with generator and discriminator networks. Largely superseded by diffusion models for image generation.
71	GPTQ	Post-training quantization method that compresses LLMs to 4-bit with minimal quality loss. Popular for local deployment.
72	Hybrid Search	Combining vector (semantic) and keyword (BM25) search with rank fusion (RRF) for best retrieval quality.
73	ICL	In-Context Learning — the ability of LLMs to learn from examples provided in the prompt without weight updates.
74	Latency	Time from sending a request to receiving the first (TTFT) or last (E2E) token of the response.
75	MAU	Monthly Active Users — common metric for sizing AI deployments and estimating costs.
76	Multimodal	Models that process multiple input types (text, images, audio, video) in a single architecture.
77	NLI	Natural Language Inference — task of determining if a hypothesis is entailed by, contradicts, or is neutral to a premise. Used in groundedness evaluation.
78	Orchestrator	Component that routes requests, manages conversation state, calls tools, and coordinates between models in an AI application.
79	PagedAttention	Memory management technique (used in vLLM) that pages KV cache like OS virtual memory, reducing waste.
80	Prompt Caching	Reusing computed prefixes across requests to reduce latency and cost for shared system prompts.
81	Red Teaming	Adversarial testing of AI systems to find safety vulnerabilities, jailbreaks, and failure modes before deployment.
82	Retriever	Component in RAG that searches a knowledge base and returns relevant documents/chunks for the LLM context.
83	RPM	Requests Per Minute — Azure OpenAI rate limit unit. Measured alongside TPM.
84	Softmax	Activation function that converts logits to a probability distribution. Final layer of token prediction in LLMs.
85	Streaming	Returning tokens incrementally as they're generated, reducing perceived latency. Enabled via stream=True in API calls.
86	TTFT	Time To First Token — latency metric measuring how quickly the first token of a response is returned.
87	Tool Use	LLM capability to decide when and how to call external tools (APIs, databases, code) during generation.
88	TF-IDF	Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency — classic text representation weighting scheme. Predecessor to modern embeddings.

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Card 12: Key Azure AI URLs & Resources

Azure Portals & Services

Resource	URL
Azure AI Foundry Portal	https://ai.azure.com
Azure Portal	https://portal.azure.com
Azure OpenAI Studio (legacy)	https://oai.azure.com
Azure AI Content Safety	https://contentsafety.cognitive.azure.com

Pricing Pages

Service	URL
Azure OpenAI Pricing	https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/cognitive-services/openai-service/
Azure AI Search Pricing	https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/search/
Azure AI Services Pricing	https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/cognitive-services/
Azure Virtual Machines Pricing (GPU)	https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/

Documentation

Topic	URL
Azure OpenAI Documentation	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-services/openai/
Azure AI Foundry Documentation	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-studio/
Azure AI Search Documentation	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/search/
Azure AI Content Safety Documentation	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-services/content-safety/
Azure OpenAI Model Catalog	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-studio/how-to/model-catalog
Responsible AI Principles	https://www.microsoft.com/ai/responsible-ai
Responsible AI Dashboard	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/machine-learning/concept-responsible-ai-dashboard
Azure OpenAI Quotas & Limits	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-services/openai/quotas-limits
Azure OpenAI What's New	https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-services/openai/whats-new

GitHub Repositories

Repository	URL
Semantic Kernel	https://github.com/microsoft/semantic-kernel
AutoGen	https://github.com/microsoft/autogen
Azure AI Samples	https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-ai
Azure OpenAI Samples	https://github.com/Azure-Samples/openai
PyRIT (Red Teaming)	https://github.com/Azure/PyRIT
Prompty	https://github.com/microsoft/prompty
AI App Templates	https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ai-app-templates
Azure AI Evaluation SDK	https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/tree/main/sdk/evaluation

Community & Learning

Resource	URL
Microsoft Learn AI Training Paths	https://learn.microsoft.com/training/browse/?terms=AI
Azure AI Blog	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ai-azure-ai-services-blog/bg-p/Azure-AI-Services-blog
Microsoft AI (Corporate)	https://www.microsoft.com/ai
Azure AI Discord	https://aka.ms/azureaicommunity

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Quick Lookup Index

Jump to any card by topic:

Card	Topic	Key Questions Answered
Card 1	LLM Parameters	What do temperature, top-p, penalties do? What values should I use?
Card 2	Tokens	How many tokens is my text? What does each model cost?
Card 3	Model Selection	Which model for my use case?
Card 4	RAG Architecture	Chunking? Embeddings? Retrieval strategy? Evaluation?
Card 5	Deployment Types	Standard vs. Provisioned vs. Global vs. Batch?
Card 6	Prompt Patterns	Zero-shot vs. few-shot vs. CoT? Prompt template?
Card 7	Agent Frameworks	Which agent framework should I use?
Card 8	Infrastructure	GPU sizing? VM selection? PTU break-even?
Card 9	Responsible AI	Pre-deployment checks? Content filters? Security?
Card 10	Copilot Ecosystem	Which Copilot does what? Licensing?
Card 11	Glossary	What does this acronym mean?
Card 12	URLs & Links	Where is the pricing page? Where is the documentation?

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Module 11 of 12 in the AI Nexus learning path. Designed as a living reference — updated as Azure AI services evolve.