Vespa Product Updates, September 2020

In September 2020, Vespa introduced several updates enhancing its capabilities in processing and serving big data. A significant update was the integration of ONNX-Runtime into Vespa’s ranking framework, greatly improving the evaluation of large deep-learning models, specifically NLP models like BERT, with the aid of hardware acceleration and quantization for optimized performance. This update enabled the creation of a state-of-the-art question/answering system within Vespa that utilizes approximate nearest neighbors and large BERT models. Additionally, enhancements included support for the Hamming distance metric in ranking, improved performance for conditional writes, and a compressed transaction log that increases update throughput significantly. Vespa, developed by Yahoo engineers and used by platforms like Yahoo News and Verizon Media Ad Platform, continues to evolve with community feedback and contributions.