🔗 Faster similarity search performance with pgvector indexes

In the fast evolving landscape of approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, one of the most important recent launches is pgvector extension version 0.5.0, which adds support for Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW) indexes. With the constant quest for efficiency, speed and performance, HNSW indexes significantly reduce ANN query latency for the desired recall. We are excited to announce support for pgvector 0.5.0 in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

In this post, we explain pgvector indexes, clarify different configurations, and give hands-on coding examples for improving the performance and viability of a pgvector-based application using HNSW indexes.