Summary:
- This article discusses the choice between Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW) and inverted index for search applications, particularly in the context of dense and sparse retrievers.
- HNSW is presented as a scalable and efficient approach for dense retrievers, offering good performance and low memory usage. Inverted index, on the other hand, is highlighted as a suitable choice for sparse retrievers, providing better performance and flexibility.
- The article provides operational advice, suggesting that the choice between HNSW and inverted index should be based on the specific requirements of the search application, such as the sparsity of the data and the desired performance characteristics.