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AhaBulb: Stuff Everyone Should Know · ahabulb.com/ai-hnsw-approximate-search

To search millions of embeddings fast, what do vector indexes like HNSW usually trade away?

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  1. The ability to store numbers
  2. Support for text
  3. A guarantee of the exact nearest match

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References

  1. Malkov and Yashunin, Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using HNSW graphs (arXiv 1603.09320) arxiv.org/abs/1603.09320 Checked 2026-10-10.

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