SQLite core team builds Vec1: native ANN vector search is feature-complete
solyarisoftware · x · 2026-10-10
The core SQLite team is developing Vec1, an extension adding native approximate nearest-neighbor (ANN) vector search to SQLite. It is already feature-complete, with only test coverage and optimizations left before 1.0.
Key facts:
- Built on SQLite's virtual table interface; supports Euclidean (L2) and cosine distances
- Uses IVFADC (Inverted File with Asymmetric Distance Computation) with OPQ (Optimized Product Quantization)
- Portable C with zero external dependencies; SIMD via AVX2 on x86 and NEON on ARM
- Ships as a single vec1.c file; on x86-64 compile with -mavx2 -mfma and -O3 for best performance
- Current release is v0.7, with a user manual, reference docs, and a video tutorial
Roadmap: no new features before 1.0; post-1.0 plans include wasm SIMD support and non-32-bit-float vector element types (e.g. 8-bit).
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