Vespa Newsletter, May 2024

The May 2024 Vespa newsletter highlights several advancements and new features in the Vespa platform, including support for Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications and significant improvements in vector search efficiency. These updates include LLM inference support, enabling the implementation of RAG applications entirely within Vespa, and enhancing vector search cost-effectiveness through multi-phase ranking and embedding optimizations. Additionally, Pyvespa now features simplified Vespa CLI installation and supports new operations in rank profiles. Vespa has introduced fuzzy prefix matching, improving search results for interactive experiences, and optimized data copy performance by enhancing insertion throughput. Distance calculation performance has been improved for various value types and nearest neighbor searches, and new features like LlamaIndex integration and rank debugging support have been added. The newsletter also invites readers to the AI Engineer World’s Fair and encourages deploying applications on Vespa Cloud.