docs: the int8 index is faster than f32 on AVX2, not slower

Measured with `clawhdf5_accel::dot_i8` in place, medians of three
alternating runs at N = 100 000 x 384, same binary:

  build      f32 3197 ms   int8 1778 ms   int8+re-score 1826 ms
  ef = 64    f32 13 399 QPS @ 0.9945   int8+re-score 21 848 QPS @ 0.9940

So at equal recall the quantised index is 1.63x the queries per second
and 1.8x the build speed, holding a quarter of the vectors. The earlier
"~13% of QPS" figure compared a scalar int8 loop against hand-written
AVX2 f32 kernels and was measuring the missing kernel; it is kept in
BENCHMARKS.md with that explanation rather than quietly replaced.

Still off by default, now for portability rather than performance: the
kernel is AVX2-only and aarch64 falls back to scalar, where the original
trade applies. A NEON kernel would settle it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
This commit is contained in:
osobh
2026-09-20 17:30:56 -07:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 97e65f2adf
commit dea02f5214
4 changed files with 48 additions and 9 deletions
+4 -2
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@@ -44,8 +44,10 @@ Cargo workspace with 16 crates under `crates/` (plus `libaec-sys`, an internal F
which roughly halves a loaded store's memory (2.72x -> 1.74x the raw vectors
at 100K); because quantised distances are approximate and `ef` cannot
compensate, the query path then re-scores the candidate pool against the
exact embeddings, which holds recall at the f32 index's level and costs
~13% of QPS. `hybrid_search` keeps one incremental BM25
exact embeddings, which holds recall at the f32 index's level. On AVX2 it is
also 1.63x the QPS and 1.8x the build speed (`clawhdf5_accel::dot_i8`); it
stays off by default only because that kernel is AVX2-only and aarch64 falls
back to scalar. `hybrid_search` keeps one incremental BM25
index for the life of the store and never writes the store: Hebbian
activation boosts are persisted by the next checkpoint (or on drop), not per
query. Measure any search-path change with