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Updated on 2023-06-20 GMT+08:00
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Cluster Planning for Vector Retrieval

Off-heap memory is used for index construction and query in vector retrieval. Therefore, the required cluster capacity is related to the index type and off-heap memory size. You can estimate the off-heap memory required by full indexing to select proper cluster specifications.

There are different methods for estimating the size of off-heap memory required by different types of indexes. The calculation formulas are as follows:
  • Graph Index

    If you need to update indexes in real time, consider the off-heap memory overhead required for vector index construction and automatic merge. The actual size of required mem_needs is at least 1.5 to 2 times of the original estimation.

  • PQ Index

  • FALT and IVF Indexes

Table 1 Parameter description

Parameter

Description

dim

Vector dimensions

neighbors

Number of neighbors of a graph node. The default value is 64.

dim_size

Number of bytes required by each dimension. The default value is four bytes in the float type.

num

Total number of vectors

delta

Metadata size. This parameter can be left blank.

frag_num

Number of vector segments during quantization and coding. If this parameter is not specified when an index is created, the value is determined by the vector dimension dim.

if dim <= 256: 
  frag_num = dim / 4
elif dim <= 512: 
  frag_num = dim / 8
else :
  frag_num = 64

frag_size

Size of the center point during quantization and coding. The default value is 1. If the value of frag_num is greater than 256, the value of frag_size is 2.

These calculation methods can estimate the size of off-heap memory required by a complete vector index. To determine cluster specifications, you also need to consider the heap memory overhead of each node.

Heap memory allocation policy: The size of the heap memory of each node is half of the node physical memory, and the maximum size is 31 GB.

For example, if you create a Graph index for the SIFT10M dataset, set dim to 128, dim_size to 4, neighbors to default value 64, and num to 10 million, the off-heap memory required by the Graph index is as follows:

Considering the overhead of heap memory, a single server with 8 vCPUs and 16 GB memory is recommended. If real-time write or update is required, you need to apply for larger memory.

Parent topic: Vector Retrieval