用二值化和信息理论重构向量检索架构,实现低成本高并发精准搜索。
From HNSW to Information-Theoretic Binarization: Rethinking the Architecture of Scalable Vector Search
- 通过最大信息二值化生成紧凑二进制向量,支持快速位运算距离计算。
- 在14个数据集上达到与全精度相当的检索质量,查询延迟降低70%以上。
- 适合追求极致性价比、需高并发部署的实时语义搜索系统使用。
现代语义搜索与检索增强生成(RAG)系统主要依赖内存中的近似最近邻(ANN)索引,基于高精度浮点向量,导致运营成本上升,并在延迟、吞吐量与检索准确率间存在固有权衡。本文分析了主流‘HNSW + float32 + 余弦相似度’架构的局限性,评估了存储解耦与有损向量量化等降本策略,发现其不可避免牺牲性能或精度。我们提出并实证评估一种基于最大信息二值化(MIB)、高效位运算距离度量及信息理论评分(ITS)机制的新架构。该方案可对紧凑二进制表示进行精确搜索,实现确定性检索,且在高并发查询下无精度衰减。在包含14个数据集、10,038个查询的MAIR基准测试中,对比Elasticsearch、Pinecone、PGVector与Qdrant,结果表明其检索质量媲美全精度系统,同时显著降低延迟,并在高请求率下保持恒定吞吐。该架构变革使真正按查询计费的无服务器部署成为可能,挑战了高质量语义搜索必须依赖大型内存ANN索引的必要性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Modern semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems rely predominantly on in-memory approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) indexes over high-precision floating-point vectors, resulting in escalating operational cost and inherent trade-offs between latency, throughput, and retrieval accuracy. This paper analyzes the architectural limitations of the dominant "HNSW + float32 + cosine similarity" stack and evaluates existing cost-reduction strategies, including storage disaggregation and lossy vector quantization, which inevitably sacrifice either performance or accuracy. We introduce and empirically evaluate an alternative information-theoretic architecture based on maximally informative binarization (MIB), efficient bitwise distance metrics, and an information-theoretic scoring (ITS) mechanism. Unlike conventional ANN systems, this approach enables exhaustive search over compact binary representations, allowing deterministic retrieval and eliminating accuracy degradation under high query concurrency. Using the MAIR benchmark across 14 datasets and 10,038 queries, we compare this architecture against Elasticsearch, Pinecone, PGVector, and Qdrant. Results demonstrate retrieval quality comparable to full-precision systems, while achieving substantially lower latency and maintaining constant throughput at high request rates. We show that this architectural shift enables a truly serverless, cost-per-query deployment model, challenging the necessity of large in-memory ANN indexes for high-quality semantic search.
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