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This will be a big deal if Lucene got competitive on http://ann-benchmarks.com http://ann-benchmarks.com if it became a serious alternative (and more holistic)

This will be a big deal if Lucene got competitive on http://ann-benchmarks.com http://ann-benchmarks.com if it became a serious alternative (and more holistic) than the vector databases. But it comes with continued challenges if I understand: - Panama is an incubating API and Java has taken its time having an official way of using SIMD. It could all change in Java 22 - It only works on Java 20, with a very specific set of flags passed to the JVM. It’ll take time for this change to make it into Elasticsearch and Solr - Panama itself is a weird and very low level API. - Lucene organizes the HNSW vector index graph alongside its inverted index segments. And these need to be merged/compacted periodically. Merging HNSW graphs, as I understand it, is computationally difficult as the graph gets rebuilt.

pjmlp 3y ago
Great if this forces Java upgrades. Using Solr with Java 8 is still quite common.
- re-thc 3y ago
  The newer GC options should have already forced people to upgrade. A use case like search churns through memory. Maybe just what I've seen but Solr usually has users sticking with older versions of Java.
  - jbaiter 3y ago
    From Solr 8 on you need a Java 11 runtime.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Solr 9, for Solr 8, Java 8 is still used. https://solr.apache.org/guide/8_11/solr-system-requirements.html#java-requirements https://solr.apache.org/guide/8_11/solr-system-requirements.... Which is a pain, many products that use Solr as dependency like Sitecore, still lag behind in Solr versions. https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstax-cloud-sitecore-solr-compatibility/ https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstax-cloud-sitecore-so... While it mostly works with more recent versions, there is no support if issues cannot be replicated on officially supported versions.
ohye 3y ago
Elasticsearch is already on Java 20: https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/95373 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/95373

pjmlp 3y ago

Great if this forces Java upgrades. Using Solr with Java 8 is still quite common.

re-thc 3y ago
The newer GC options should have already forced people to upgrade. A use case like search churns through memory. Maybe just what I've seen but Solr usually has users sticking with older versions of Java.
- jbaiter 3y ago
  From Solr 8 on you need a Java 11 runtime.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Solr 9, for Solr 8, Java 8 is still used. https://solr.apache.org/guide/8_11/solr-system-requirements.html#java-requirements https://solr.apache.org/guide/8_11/solr-system-requirements.... Which is a pain, many products that use Solr as dependency like Sitecore, still lag behind in Solr versions. https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstax-cloud-sitecore-solr-compatibility/ https://www.searchstax.com/docs/searchstax-cloud-sitecore-so... While it mostly works with more recent versions, there is no support if issues cannot be replicated on officially supported versions.

ohye 3y ago

Elasticsearch is already on Java 20: https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/95373 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/95373