The setting was persisted in /meta and otherwise ignored: embeddings
were always written as f32. It now does what it says.
clawhdf5-format:
- `DatasetBuilder::with_f16_data` writes IEEE binary16 (numpy float16),
rounding to nearest-even, and `make_f16_type`.
- `clawhdf5_format::float16` holds the f32 <-> f16 conversions, the one
implementation the writer, the reader and the agent all use. Checked
against the `half` crate on 16.7M f32 values and round-trips all 65536
half values; the h5py interop tests confirm the rounding matches
numpy's bit for bit (4020 values incl. ties, subnormals, overflow).
- Reading little-endian float16 as f32 has a fast path.
clawhdf5-agent:
- A float16 store writes /memory/embeddings as half precision, and
`MemoryCache::half_precision` rounds each embedding as it enters the
cache (save, update, WAL replay, and on load of a store still f32 on
disk), so memory and file agree bit for bit and a store searches the
same before and after a reopen (tested).
- Values beyond +-65504 are refused with the new
`MemoryError::InvalidEntry` rather than stored as infinity, on every
save path; batches are all or nothing, and a rejected ephemeral entry
stays in the ephemeral tier. Breaking for exhaustive matches.
- CLI: `create --float16`. Off by default.
Measured on tank, 384-dim, six runs alternating order, medians
(search_harness --float16-study --full): at 100K the file goes from
154.0 to 80.8 MiB (-48%), checkpoint 752 -> 512 ms, open 300 -> 252 ms;
vector recall@10 against an exact scan and hybrid_search latency do not
change. At 10K open is 3 ms slower. Also a test that h5py opens a whole
agent store, f32 and float16, and decodes every dataset.
Docs: README, BENCHMARKS.md ("float16 embedding storage"), CHANGELOG
(including the h5py interop fixes in the previous commit), CLAUDE.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>