NEXUS is a production-grade, full-text and semantic search engine built from scratch, implementing advanced data structures and distributed systems concepts. It focuses on probabilistic optimization, sub-millisecond latency, and hybrid AI-powered search. The project demonstrates core technologies like LSM Trees, Bloom Filters, HNSW Graphs, and W-TinyLFU caches, integrated into a high-performance pipeline. It also includes a LeetCode algorithm library with implementations of classic interview patterns and provides insights into distributed crawling and persistent storage.
This article explains the internal workings of vector databases, highlighting that they don't perform a brute-force search as commonly described. It details algorithms like HNSW, IVF, and PQ, the tradeoffs between recall, speed, and memory, and how different RAG patterns impact vector database usage. It also discusses production challenges like filtering, updates, and sharding.
