Vespa Product Updates, June 2020

In June 2020, Vespa introduced several enhancements, including support for approximate nearest neighbor vector search using the HNSW algorithm, which allows efficient combination with filters and text search, offering millisecond response times while processing hundreds of millions of documents per node. Vespa also improved its unique Streaming Search feature, increasing read throughput up to fivefold through better parallelism, benefiting applications like personal and high-write searches. Additionally, new rank features were introduced, such as optimized fieldMatch and the globalSequence feature for document ordering, despite some limitations in systems with changing node indexes. Vespa, largely developed by Yahoo engineers, continues to evolve with community feedback and contributions, serving as a robust open-source big data processing and serving engine used by various Yahoo and Verizon Media products.