Vector Retrieval Myth: Index Size is Not the Bottleneck
lateinteraction · x · 2026-08-25
A discussion on vector retrieval index size clarifies that for many applications, standard PLAID indexes are already smaller than the large single-vector representations commonly used today. The claim that 'index size shrinks' is misleading; the real issue is the lack of infrastructure diffusion, not a technical challenge. ColBERTv2 and PLAID solved storage costs back in 2021, yet many still persist with raw matrices and MaxSim operations, which is described as inefficient as running Transformers without KV caching.
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