PlanetScale vectors now supports quantization

November 20, 2024

PlanetScale vectors now supports quantization. Quantization is a form of vector compression that allows your vector indexes to consume less space.

This change brings support for product_quantization and fixed_quantization. You can configure these for your indexes by specifying them in the SECONDARY_ENGINE_ATTRIBUTE when creating your indexes. For example:

CREATE VECTOR INDEX embedding_index ON table_1(embedding)
  SECONDARY_ENGINE_ATTRIBUTE='{"type":"spann", "distance":"l2", "product_quantization":{"dimensions":96}}';

CREATE VECTOR INDEX embedding_index ON table_1(embedding)
  SECONDARY_ENGINE_ATTRIBUTE='{"type":"spann", "distance":"l2", "fixed_quantization":"bfloat16"}';

Learn more in our vectors documentation.