Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost

The blog post discusses the advantages of using scalar quantization with the halfvec type in pgvector 0.7.x to enhance vector storage efficiency in Postgres databases. By replacing the traditional vector type, which uses 32-bit floats, with halfvec that employs 16-bit representation, users can achieve a 50% reduction in storage costs and improve index build and prewarming times without sacrificing query performance or recall. The post also touches on binary quantization, which further compresses vectors but may not yet provide sufficient recall for production use, particularly with 1536-dimensional embeddings. While the improvements in storage and performance are evident, the author advises experimenting with halfvec based on individual datasets before fully migrating and suggests further exploration of binary quantization with larger embedding models.

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