Linkup open-sources SPARSEUP: sub-150M sparse retriever hits 56+ nDCG@10 on BEIR-13, Apache 2.0
antoine_chaffin · x · 2026-09-17
Linkup Research released SPARSEUP, an open-source (Apache 2.0) sparse embedding model filling the sparse slot next to DenseOn and LateOn:
- Under 150M parameters, achieves 56+ nDCG@10 on BEIR-13 — the strongest public vocabulary-based sparse retriever they know of
- Method: start from LateOn-unsupervised, graft ModernBERT's original MLM head, then fine-tune a modified SPLADE-style encoder on LightOn's fine-tuning mixture
- With same backbone and data it lands close to DenseOn; with Seismic it runs sub-millisecond on MS MARCO at >97% recall vs exact search
- Sparse models offer distinct properties like precise lexical matching on rare words; the release shows open contributions enabling further open releases
Related event: Linkup Open-Sources SparseUp: 149M-Parameter Sparse Retriever Tops BEIR-13(12 posts)→
More from Research
- How to Loop Your Transformer: Meta/MIT arXiv paper on loop scaling laws — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-11-02
- Meta & MIT paper: looping transformer layers beats adding depth at fixed size — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-11-02
- ByteDance Seed's Loop-μP paper draws 'Chinese loopmaxxers' buzz — scaling01 · 2026-11-02
- New benchmark shows frontier VLMs still can't read Braille despite 43M blind users — prajdabre · 2026-11-02
- Diffusion models emerge from associative memory: spurious states may signal generalization — DimaKrotov · 2026-11-02
- r/LocalLLaMA Proposal: Private Quality Benchmarks Over Endless tok/s Chasing — Express_Quail_1493 · 2026-11-02