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🗜️ Understanding Quantization

How search engines compress vectors to fit billions of embeddings in memory. This page explains vector quantization from first principles — what it is, why it matters, and how different techniques trade off accuracy for efficiency.

🤔 What is Quantization?

Think of quantization like compressing a photo. A RAW image from your camera might be 25 MB — full precision, every detail preserved. Save it as JPEG and it drops to 2 MB. You lose some information, but for most purposes the image looks identical.

Vector quantization does the same thing for embeddings. When a machine learning model encodes text or images, it produces a vector — a list of numbers (typically 128–1536 floating-point values) that captures meaning. These vectors are precise, but they're also big.

"The quick brown fox" → [0.0234, -0.1567, 0.4521, ..., 0.0891]
                         ↑ 384 float32 values = 1,536 bytes per vector

Quantization reduces the precision of each number — or replaces groups of numbers with compact codes — so vectors take less space while still being "close enough" for similarity search.

Note

Quantization ≠ dimensionality reduction. Dimensionality reduction (like PCA) removes dimensions entirely. Quantization keeps all dimensions but reduces the precision of each value.

💰 Why Compress Vectors?

Let's do the math. A typical embedding model produces 384-dimensional vectors in float32:

1 vector = 384 dimensions × 4 bytes = 1,536 bytes

Now scale that up:

Dataset Size Memory (float32) With 4× Compression With 32× Compression
100K vectors 146 MB 37 MB 4.6 MB
1M vectors 1.5 GB 375 MB 46 MB
10M vectors 15 GB 3.7 GB 460 MB
100M vectors 150 GB 37 GB 4.6 GB
1B vectors 1.5 TB 375 GB 46 GB

At billion scale, full-precision vectors require 1.5 terabytes of RAM — far beyond what typical servers provide. With 32× compression (Product Quantization), that same dataset fits in 46 GB — a single machine with a decent memory budget.

Tip

Even at smaller scales, compression matters. Less memory means better cache utilization, which means faster search. A 4× compressed index that fits in L3 cache will outperform a full-precision index that spills to RAM.

📊 Types of Quantization

🔢 Scalar Quantization (INT8)

The simplest approach: map each float32 value to an int8 (8-bit integer). This gives exactly 4× compression — every 4-byte float becomes a 1-byte integer.

How It Works

For each dimension, find the min and max values across all vectors, then linearly scale every float into the [0, 255] range:

quantized_value = round(255 × (value - min) / (max - min))

To reconstruct (dequantize):

reconstructed = min + quantized_value × (max - min) / 255

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 4×
Recall@10 ≥ 95% (often 98%+)
Speed impact Faster (smaller data = better cache)
Complexity Very low — simple min/max scaling
Calibration Linear (min/max per dimension)

Tip

Scalar INT8 is the "safe default" — you get meaningful memory savings with almost no recall loss. Start here unless you need more aggressive compression.

🔢 Scalar Quantization (INT4) — Non-Uniform

INT4 quantization maps each float32 value to a 4-bit integer (0–15), packed two values per byte. This gives 8× compression. Unlike INT8's linear mapping, INT4 uses non-uniform (quantile-based) calibration to better preserve the data distribution.

How It Works

  1. Calibration: Compute quantile-based boundaries per dimension from a representative sample. This creates 16 non-uniformly spaced buckets that match the actual data distribution.
  2. Encoding: Assign each dimension value to the nearest boundary interval (0–15).
  3. Packing: Store two 4-bit values per byte (nibble packing) — first value in bits 7–4, second in bits 3–0.
Original:    [0.23, -0.45, 0.67, 0.01]
Encoded:     [9, 2, 14, 7]       (4-bit level per dimension)
Packed:      [0x92, 0xE7]        (two nibbles per byte → 50% storage)

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 8×
Recall@10 85–95% (with rescore)
Speed impact Fast — SIMD-accelerated packed dot product
Complexity Medium — requires calibration on representative data
Calibration Non-uniform (quantile-based boundaries per dimension)
Rescore default 3× oversampling

Tip

INT4 hits the sweet spot between INT8 and IVF-PQ: 8× compression with 85–95% recall when paired with the configurable rescore strategy. Ideal for 10M–100M vector workloads that can't afford full PQ training complexity.

🔢 Scalar Quantization (INT2) — Non-Uniform

INT2 quantization maps each float32 value to a 2-bit integer (0–3), packed four values per byte. This gives 16× compression — the most aggressive scalar quantization before going to binary.

How It Works

  1. Calibration: Same quantile-based approach as INT4, but with only 4 buckets per dimension.
  2. Encoding: Assign each dimension value to one of 4 levels.
  3. Packing: Store four 2-bit values per byte (crumb packing) — values stored in bits 7–6, 5–4, 3–2, 1–0.
Original:    [0.23, -0.45, 0.67, 0.01]
Encoded:     [2, 0, 3, 1]        (2-bit level per dimension)
Packed:      [0x8D]              (four crumbs per byte → 75% storage reduction)

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 16×
Recall@10 75–90% (with rescore)
Speed impact Fastest scalar — minimal data to scan
Complexity Medium — same calibration as INT4
Calibration Non-uniform (quantile-based boundaries per dimension)
Rescore default 5× oversampling

Important

INT2 is aggressive — only 4 levels per dimension. The higher default oversampling (5×) compensates by rescoring more candidates with exact float32 distances. Best suited for memory-constrained environments where you accept some recall trade-off.

🔲 Binary Quantization (1-bit)

The most aggressive approach: each float becomes a single bit — 0 if negative, 1 if positive. This gives 32× compression (32 float32 values → 32 bits = 4 bytes).

How It Works

bit = 1 if value > 0, else 0

A 384-dimensional vector becomes just 384 bits = 48 bytes (down from 1,536 bytes).

graph LR
    subgraph "Original floats"
        V1["0.23"]
        V2["-0.45"]
        V3["0.01"]
        V4["-0.89"]
        V5["0.67"]
        V6["-0.12"]
        V7["0.34"]
        V8["-0.56"]
    end

    subgraph "Binary (sign bit)"
        B1["1"]
        B2["0"]
        B3["1"]
        B4["0"]
        B5["1"]
        B6["0"]
        B7["1"]
        B8["0"]
    end

    V1 --> B1
    V2 --> B2
    V3 --> B3
    V4 --> B4
    V5 --> B5
    V6 --> B6
    V7 --> B7
    V8 --> B8

Hamming Distance

With binary vectors, similarity is measured using Hamming distance — just count how many bits differ. Modern CPUs have a hardware POPCNT instruction that makes this blazing fast:

vector_a = 10101010
vector_b = 10100110
XOR      = 00001100  → popcount = 2 (Hamming distance = 2)

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 32×
Recall@10 60–80% (varies by dataset)
Speed impact Extremely fast (bitwise ops + POPCNT)
Complexity Trivial — just sign extraction

Important

Binary quantization loses significant information. It works best with high-dimensional embeddings (768+) where the sign pattern alone carries meaning. For 384-dim or lower, expect noticeable recall degradation. Always pair with rescoring (recompute exact distance on top candidates).

🧩 Product Quantization (PQ)

Product Quantization is the "sweet spot" — achieving 32× compression while maintaining much higher recall than binary quantization. It's more complex, but the idea is elegant.

The Core Idea

Instead of compressing each number independently, PQ groups dimensions into subspaces and finds the best approximation for each group from a learned codebook.

Step by Step

graph TD
    subgraph "Step 1: Split vector into subspaces"
        V["384-dim vector"]
        V --> S1["Subspace 1<br/>dims 0-23"]
        V --> S2["Subspace 2<br/>dims 24-47"]
        V --> S3["Subspace 3<br/>dims 48-71"]
        V --> SD["..."]
        V --> S16["Subspace 16<br/>dims 360-383"]
    end

    subgraph "Step 2: Quantize each subspace"
        S1 --> C1["Centroid ID: 42"]
        S2 --> C2["Centroid ID: 187"]
        S3 --> C3["Centroid ID: 3"]
        SD --> CD["..."]
        S16 --> C16["Centroid ID: 201"]
    end

    subgraph "Step 3: Store compact code"
        C1 --> Code["[42, 187, 3, ..., 201]<br/>16 bytes total"]
    end

Training phase: 1. Split all vectors into M subspaces (e.g., 16 subspaces of 24 dims each) 2. Run K-Means clustering on each subspace independently (K=256 centroids) 3. Store the 16 codebooks (256 centroids × 24 dims × 4 bytes each)

Encoding phase: 1. For each vector, split into M subspaces 2. Find the nearest centroid in each subspace's codebook 3. Store M centroid indices (1 byte each) → M bytes per vector

Search phase (Asymmetric Distance Computation): 1. Compute distances from the full-precision query to all 256 centroids in each subspace → 256 × M lookup table 2. For each stored code, sum up M table lookups → approximate distance 3. Return top candidates (optionally rescore with full vectors)

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 32× (with 16 subspaces) to 96× (with 48 subspaces)
Recall@10 80–92% (depends on subspaces and dataset)
Speed impact Fast — table lookups instead of floating-point math
Complexity High — requires training codebooks on representative data

Note

The "product" in Product Quantization refers to the Cartesian product of subspace codebooks. Each subspace is quantized independently, and the full approximation is the product of these independent approximations.

📂 IVF-PQ (Inverted File + Product Quantization)

IVF-PQ combines two techniques for maximum efficiency at billion scale:

  1. IVF (Inverted File): Partition vectors into clusters using K-Means. At search time, only examine the nearest clusters.
  2. PQ (Product Quantization): Compress vectors within each cluster.
graph TD
    Q["Query vector"] --> Coarse["Stage 1: Coarse Search<br/>Find nprobe nearest clusters"]

    Coarse --> P1["Partition 1<br/>50K PQ codes"]
    Coarse --> P2["Partition 2<br/>50K PQ codes"]
    Coarse --> P3["Partition 3<br/>50K PQ codes"]

    P1 --> Fine["Stage 2: Fine Search<br/>ADC distance on PQ codes"]
    P2 --> Fine
    P3 --> Fine

    Fine --> Results["Top-K results<br/>(optionally rescore)"]

How it reduces work:

  • With 1000 partitions and nprobe=10, you only examine 1% of the dataset

  • Within those partitions, PQ codes are tiny, so scanning is cache-friendly

  • Combined effect: search billions of vectors in milliseconds

Properties

Metric Value
Compression ratio 32× (same as PQ)
Recall@10 75–90% (depends on nprobe and PQ settings)
Speed Very fast — coarse filtering + compressed scan
Scale Billions of vectors on a single node
Complexity Requires training (K-Means for partitions + PQ codebooks)

Tip

Tuning nprobe is the key recall/speed knob. Higher nprobe = more partitions searched = higher recall but slower queries. Start with nprobe=10 and increase until you hit your recall target.

📋 Comparison Table

Method Compression Recall@10 Speed Memory (1B × 384d) Best For
Scalar INT8 4× 95–99% ⚡ Fast 375 GB High-recall, moderate scale
Scalar INT4 8× 85–95% ⚡ Fast 188 GB Balanced compression/recall
Scalar INT2 16× 75–90% ⚡⚡ Very Fast 94 GB Memory-constrained, pre-filter
Binary (1-bit) 32× 60–80% ⚡⚡ Fastest 46 GB First-pass candidate generation
Product Quantization 32–96× 80–92% ⚡ Fast 46 GB (32×) Large-scale with good recall
IVF-PQ 32–96× 75–90% ⚡⚡ Very Fast 46 GB (32×) Billion-scale, balanced

🎯 What Spector Uses

Spector provides a full spectrum of scalar quantization plus IVF-PQ, covering every memory/recall trade-off:

Scalar INT8 — For High-Recall Scenarios

When recall is critical (search quality matters more than memory), Scalar INT8 delivers:

  • 4× compression with nearly lossless quality (≥ 95% recall)

  • Simple min/max calibration — no training phase needed

  • SIMD-friendly — int8 operations parallelize beautifully on modern CPUs

  • Ideal for datasets up to ~50M vectors on a 64 GB machine

Scalar INT4 — The Balanced Sweet Spot

When you need more compression than INT8 but don't want the complexity of PQ:

  • 8× compression with 85–95% recall when paired with rescore

  • Non-uniform (quantile-based) calibration adapts to your data distribution

  • Nibble-packed storage (2 values/byte) with SIMD-accelerated distance

  • Default 3× oversampling rescore recovers recall lost to quantization

  • Ideal for 10M–100M vector workloads on moderate hardware

Scalar INT2 — Maximum Scalar Compression

When memory is the primary constraint and you can tolerate some recall loss:

  • 16× compression — just 4 levels per dimension

  • Same quantile-based calibration as INT4 for optimal bucket placement

  • Crumb-packed storage (4 values/byte) for minimal memory footprint

  • Default 5× oversampling rescore compensates for aggressive quantization

  • Ideal for memory-constrained environments or as a fast pre-filter

IVF-PQ — For Billion-Scale Scenarios

When you need to search billions of vectors on commodity hardware:

  • 32× compression brings 1B vectors down to ~46 GB

  • Two-level search (coarse IVF + fine PQ) keeps latency low

  • Trained codebooks preserve more information than binary quantization

  • nprobe parameter lets you dial recall vs. speed at query time

Configurable Rescore Strategy

All quantization modes support an oversampling-based rescore to recover recall: 1. Retrieve oversamplingFactor × k candidates using fast quantized distance 2. Recompute exact float32 distances for those candidates 3. Return the true top-K based on exact scores

Quantization Default Oversampling Effective Recall
INT8 1 (no rescore) 95–99%
INT4 3× 85–95%
INT2 5× 75–90%

Note

Set oversampling to 1 to disable rescore entirely (faster but lower recall). GPU acceleration for INT4/INT2 requires dimensions to be a multiple of 32; otherwise Spector automatically falls back to CPU/SIMD.

The Full Spectrum

graph LR
    subgraph "Spector Coverage"
        INT8["Scalar INT8<br/>4× compression<br/>95-99% recall"]
        INT4["Scalar INT4<br/>8× compression<br/>85-95% recall"]
        INT2["Scalar INT2<br/>16× compression<br/>75-90% recall"]
        IVFPQ["IVF-PQ<br/>32× compression<br/>75-90% recall"]
    end

    INT8 ---|"Need more compression"| INT4
    INT4 ---|"Need more compression"| INT2
    INT2 ---|"Billion scale"| IVFPQ

    Small["1M-50M vectors<br/>Quality-first"] --> INT8
    Medium["10M-100M vectors<br/>Balanced"] --> INT4
    Constrained["Memory-limited<br/>50M-500M"] --> INT2
    Large["100M-1B+ vectors<br/>Scale-first"] --> IVFPQ

💻 Code Examples

Configuring Scalar INT8 Quantization

// Scalar INT8 — 4× compression, near-lossless recall
var config = SpectorConfig.DEFAULT
    .withDimensions(384)
    .withCapacity(10_000_000)       // 10M vectors
    .withQuantization(QuantizationType.SCALAR_INT8);

try (var engine = new SpectorEngine(config)) {
    // Ingest as normal — quantization happens automatically
    engine.ingest("doc-1", "Vector search fundamentals", embedding);

    // Search uses quantized vectors for distance computation
    // Recall remains ≥ 95% with 4× less memory
    var results = engine.hybridSearch("vector compression", queryVector, 10);
}

Configuring Scalar INT4 (Non-Uniform, with Rescore)

// Scalar INT4 — 8× compression, non-uniform calibration, rescore for recall
var config = SpectorConfig.DEFAULT
    .withDimensions(384)
    .withCapacity(50_000_000)       // 50M vectors
    .withQuantization(QuantizationType.SCALAR_INT4)
    .withRescore(3);                // 3× oversampling (default for INT4)

try (var engine = new SpectorEngine(config)) {
    // Calibration happens automatically from ingested vectors
    engine.ingestBulk(vectors);

    // Search: fast quantized distance → rescore top candidates with exact float32
    // Effective recall: 85–95%
    var results = engine.vectorSearch(queryVector, 10);
}

Configuring Scalar INT2 (Maximum Compression)

// Scalar INT2 — 16× compression, aggressive but memory-efficient
var config = SpectorConfig.DEFAULT
    .withDimensions(384)
    .withCapacity(100_000_000)      // 100M vectors
    .withQuantization(QuantizationType.SCALAR_INT2)
    .withRescore(5);                // 5× oversampling (default for INT2)

try (var engine = new SpectorEngine(config)) {
    engine.ingestBulk(vectors);

    // 16× less memory than float32 — fits large datasets in RAM
    // Rescore compensates for aggressive quantization
    var results = engine.vectorSearch(queryVector, 10);
}

Configuring IVF-PQ for Billion-Scale

// IVF-PQ — 32× compression for billion-scale datasets
var config = SpectorConfig.DEFAULT
    .withDimensions(384)
    .withCapacity(1_000_000_000)    // 1 billion vectors
    .withQuantization(QuantizationType.IVF_PQ)
    .withIvfPartitions(4096)        // Number of coarse clusters
    .withPqSubspaces(32)            // Subspaces (384/32 = 12 dims each)
    .withNprobe(16);                // Partitions to search (recall/speed knob)

try (var engine = new SpectorEngine(config)) {
    // Training happens automatically on first batch of vectors
    engine.ingestBulk(trainingVectors);  // First batch trains codebooks

    // Subsequent ingestion uses trained codebooks
    engine.ingestBulk(remainingVectors);

    // Search: coarse IVF lookup → PQ distance within partitions
    var results = engine.vectorSearch(queryVector, 10);
}

REST API Configuration

# Start with Scalar INT4 + rescore
curl -X PUT http://localhost:7070/api/v1/config \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "quantization": "scalar_int4",
    "oversamplingFactor": 3
  }'

# Start with Scalar INT2 + higher rescore for better recall
curl -X PUT http://localhost:7070/api/v1/config \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "quantization": "scalar_int2",
    "oversamplingFactor": 5
  }'

# Start with IVF-PQ
curl -X PUT http://localhost:7070/api/v1/config \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "quantization": "ivf_pq",
    "ivfPartitions": 4096,
    "pqSubspaces": 32,
    "nprobe": 16
  }'

🔗 See Also