By name: architecture description: Use when exploring codebase structure, understanding index implementations (HNSW, IVF, DISKANN, Sparse, MinHash), working with third-party libraries (faiss, hnswlib, DiskANN, Cardinal), or locating specific functionality
Knowhere Architecture
Directory Structure
| Directory | Purpose |
|---|---|
include/knowhere/ |
Public headers |
src/index/ |
Index implementations (flat/, hnsw/, ivf/, gpu/, diskann/, sparse/, minhash/) |
src/common/ |
Threading, tracing, metrics utilities |
src/cluster/ |
Clustering algorithms (KMeans) |
tests/ut/ |
Unit tests |
thirdparty/ |
Forked third-party libraries |
Core Components
Index Factory (include/knowhere/index/index_factory.h)
- Singleton factory pattern for creating indexes
- Uses macro-based static registration (
KNOWHERE_SIMPLE_REGISTER_GLOBAL)
Index Interface (include/knowhere/index/index.h)
- Template-based
Index<IndexNode>wrapper - Operations: Build, Search, RangeSearch
Configuration (include/knowhere/config.h)
- JSON-based config system
- Compile-time and runtime parameter validation
Data Types (include/knowhere/operands.h)
- fp32, fp16, bf16, int8, bin1 (binary), sparse_u32_f32
Error Handling (include/knowhere/expected.h)
- Custom
expected<T>type with Status enum
Metric Types
L2, IP (Inner Product), COSINE, Jaccard, Hamming, BM25
Detailed Reference
- Index types: See index-types.md for each index's capabilities and use cases
- Third-party libraries: See dependencies.md for faiss, hnswlib, DiskANN, Cardinal details