AdaMem: Relevance-Guided Memory Token Allocation Boosts RAG Soft Compression by 3.2 Points

_reachsumit · x · 2026-09-22

A new paper (arXiv:2609.22100) introduces AdaMem, fixing an inefficiency in RAG soft compression: existing methods assign each retained passage an identical number of continuous memory embeddings regardless of its query-specific relevance.

Method: a shared query-conditioned compressor produces passage memories and relevance scores in a single pass; a deterministic allocation rule assigns more memory tokens to higher-scoring passages and can omit low-scoring ones entirely.

Results: across six open-domain QA benchmarks at matched budgets, AdaMem consistently beats the uniform-allocation baseline OSCAR: at standard 16x compression it improves sub-string match by up to 3.2 points (5.5% relative), with larger gains at aggressive 64x compression.

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