| 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
