vchord
Vector database plugin for Postgres, written in Rust
Overview
Attributes
Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | - |
Packages
EL | PIGSTY | vchord_$v | 0.3.0 | pgvector_$v | 17 16 15 14 13 |
Debian | PIGSTY | postgresql-$v-vchord | 0.3.0 | postgresql-$v-pgvector | 17 16 15 14 13 |
Dependencies
This extension depends on: vector
Comments
pgrx=0.13.1
Availability
PG17 | PG16 | PG15 | PG14 | PG13 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
el8.x86_64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
el8.aarch64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
el9.x86_64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
el9.aarch64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
d12.x86_64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
d12.aarch64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
u22.x86_64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
u22.aarch64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
u24.x86_64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
u24.aarch64 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | 0.3.0 | ✗ |
Download
To add the required PGDG / PIGSTY upstream repository, use:
pig repo add pgdg -u # add PGDG repo and update cache (leave existing repos)
pig repo add pigsty -u # add PIGSTY repo and update cache (leave existing repos)
pig repo add pgsql -u # add PGDG + Pigsty repo and update cache (leave existing repos)
pig repo set all -u # set repo to all = NODE + PGSQL + INFRA (remove existing repos)
./node.yml -t node_repo -e node_repo_modules=node,pgsql # -l <cluster>
Or download the latest packages directly:
Install
Install this extension with:
pig ext install vchord; # install by extension name, for the current active PG version
pig ext install vchord -v 17; # install for PG 17
pig ext install vchord -v 16; # install for PG 16
pig ext install vchord -v 15; # install for PG 15
pig ext install vchord -v 14; # install for PG 14
dnf install vchord_17;
dnf install vchord_16;
dnf install vchord_15;
dnf install vchord_14;
apt install postgresql-17-vchord;
apt install postgresql-16-vchord;
apt install postgresql-15-vchord;
apt install postgresql-14-vchord;
./pgsql.yml -t pg_ext -e '{"pg_extensions": ["vchord"]}' # -l <cls>
Preload this extension with:
shared_preload_libraries = 'vchord'; # add to pg cluster config
Create this extension with:
CREATE EXTENSION vchord CASCADE;
Usage
- https://github.com/tensorchord/VectorChord
- Launch Blog: VectorChord: Store 400k Vectors for $1 in PostgreSQL
Add this extension to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf
CREATE EXTENSION vchord CASCADE;
Create Index on embedding:
CREATE INDEX ON gist_train USING vchordrq (embedding vector_l2_ops) WITH (options = $$
residual_quantization = true
[build.internal]
lists = [4096]
spherical_centroids = false
$$);
Docs
Query
The query statement is exactly the same as pgvector. VectorChord supports any filter operation and WHERE/JOIN clauses like pgvecto.rs with VBASE.
SELECT * FROM items ORDER BY embedding <-> '[3,1,2]' LIMIT 5;
Supported distance functions are:
<->
- L2 distance<#>
- (negative) inner product<=>
- cosine distance
Due to the limitation of postgresql query planner, we cannot support the range query like
SELECT embedding <-> '[3,1,2]' as distance WHERE distance < 0.1 ORDER BY distance
directly.
To query vectors within a certain distance range, you can use the following syntax.
-- Query vectors within a certain distance range
-- sphere(center, radius) means the vectors within the sphere with the center and radius, aka range query
-- <<->> is L2 distance, <<#>> is inner product, <<=>> is cosine distance
SELECT vec FROM t WHERE vec <<->> sphere('[0.24, 0.24, 0.24]'::vector, 0.012)
Query Performance Tuning
You can fine-tune the search performance by adjusting the probes
and epsilon
parameters:
-- Set probes to control the number of lists scanned.
-- Recommended range: 3%–10% of the total `lists` value.
SET vchordrq.probes = 100;
-- Set epsilon to control the reranking precision.
-- Larger value means more rerank for higher recall rate.
-- Don't change it unless you only have limited memory.
-- Recommended range: 1.0–1.9. Default value is 1.9.
SET vchordrq.epsilon = 1.9;
-- vchordrq relies on a projection matrix to optimize performance.
-- Add your vector dimensions to the `prewarm_dim` list to reduce latency.
-- If this is not configured, the first query will have higher latency as the matrix is generated on demand.
-- Default value: '64,128,256,384,512,768,1024,1536'
-- Note: This setting requires a database restart to take effect.
ALTER SYSTEM SET vchordrq.prewarm_dim = '64,128,256,384,512,768,1024,1536';
And for postgres's setting
-- If using SSDs, set `effective_io_concurrency` to 200 for faster disk I/O.
SET effective_io_concurrency = 200;
-- Disable JIT (Just-In-Time Compilation) as it offers minimal benefit (1–2%)
-- and adds overhead for single-query workloads.
SET jit = off;
-- Allocate at least 25% of total memory to `shared_buffers`.
-- For disk-heavy workloads, you can increase this to up to 90% of total memory. You may also want to disable swap with network storage to avoid io hang.
-- Note: A restart is required for this setting to take effect.
ALTER SYSTEM SET shared_buffers = '8GB';
Indexing prewarm
To prewarm the index, you can use the following SQL. It will significantly improve performance when using limited memory.
-- vchordrq_prewarm(index_name::regclass) to prewarm the index into the shared buffer
SELECT vchordrq_prewarm('gist_train_embedding_idx'::regclass)"
Index Build Time
Index building can parallelized, and with external centroid precomputation, the total time is primarily limited by disk speed. Optimize parallelism using the following settings:
-- Set this to the number of CPU cores available for parallel operations.
SET max_parallel_maintenance_workers = 8;
SET max_parallel_workers = 8;
-- Adjust the total number of worker processes.
-- Note: A restart is required for this setting to take effect.
ALTER SYSTEM SET max_worker_processes = 8;
Indexing Progress
You can check the indexing progress by querying the pg_stat_progress_create_index
view.
SELECT phase, round(100.0 * blocks_done / nullif(blocks_total, 0), 1) AS "%" FROM pg_stat_progress_create_index;
External Index Precomputation
Unlike pure SQL, an external index precomputation will first do clustering outside and insert centroids to a PostgreSQL table. Although it might be more complicated, external build is definitely much faster on larger dataset (>5M).
To get started, you need to do a clustering of vectors using faiss
, scikit-learn
or any other clustering library.
The centroids should be preset in a table of any name with 3 columns:
- id(integer): id of each centroid, should be unique
- parent(integer, nullable): parent id of each centroid, should be NULL for normal clustering
- vector(vector): representation of each centroid,
pgvector
vector type
And example could be like this:
-- Create table of centroids
CREATE TABLE public.centroids (id integer NOT NULL UNIQUE, parent integer, vector vector(768));
-- Insert centroids into it
INSERT INTO public.centroids (id, parent, vector) VALUES (1, NULL, '{0.1, 0.2, 0.3, ..., 0.768}');
INSERT INTO public.centroids (id, parent, vector) VALUES (2, NULL, '{0.4, 0.5, 0.6, ..., 0.768}');
INSERT INTO public.centroids (id, parent, vector) VALUES (3, NULL, '{0.7, 0.8, 0.9, ..., 0.768}');
-- ...
-- Create index using the centroid table
CREATE INDEX ON gist_train USING vchordrq (embedding vector_l2_ops) WITH (options = $$
[build.external]
table = 'public.centroids'
$$);
To simplify the workflow, we provide end-to-end scripts for external index pre-computation, see scripts.
Limitations
- Data Type Support: Currently, only the
f32
data type is supported for vectors. - Architecture Compatibility: The fast-scan kernel is optimized for x86_64 architectures. While it runs on aarch64, performance may be lower.
- KMeans Clustering: The built-in KMeans clustering is not yet fully optimized and may require substantial memory. We strongly recommend using external centroid precomputation for efficient index construction.