SatoriDB: Billion scale embedded vector database

Architecture

SatoriDB is a two-tier search system: a small "hot" index in RAM routes queries to "cold" vector data on disk. This lets us handle billion-scale datasets without holding everything in memory.

Routing (Hot Tier)

Quantized HNSW index over bucket centroids. Centroids are scalar-quantized (f32 → u8) so the whole routing index fits in RAM even at 500k+ buckets. When a query comes in, HNSW finds the top-K most relevant buckets in O(log N). We only search those, not the entire dataset.

Scanning (Cold Tier)

CPU-pinned Glommio workers scan selected buckets in parallel. Shared-nothing: each worker has its own io_uring ring, LRU cache, and pre-allocated heap. No cross-core synchronization on the query path. SIMD everywhere: L2 distance, dot products, quantization, k-means assignments all have AVX2/AVX-512 paths. Cache misses stream from disk without blocking.

Clustering & Rebalancing

Vectors are grouped into buckets (clusters) via k-means. A background rebalancer automatically splits buckets when they exceed ~2000 vectors, keeping bucket sizes predictable. Predictable sizes = predictable query latency. Inspired by SPFresh.

Storage

Walrus handles bulk vector storage (append-only, io_uring, topic-per-bucket). RocksDB indexes handle point lookups (fetch-by-id, duplicate detection). See docs/architecture.md for the full deep-dive.

Features

• Embedded: runs entirely in-process, no external services
• Two-tier search: HNSW routing + parallel bucket scanning
• Automatic clustering: vectors grouped by similarity, splits when buckets grow
• CPU-pinned workers: Glommio executors with io_uring
• SIMD acceleration: AVX2/AVX-512 for distance computation
• Configurable durability: fsync schedules from "every write" to "no sync"
• Persistent storage: Walrus (topic-based append storage) + RocksDB indexes

Linux only (requires io_uring, kernel 5.8+)

Install

cargo add satoridb

Quick Start

use satoridb::SatoriDb;

fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    let db = SatoriDb::builder("my_app")
        .workers(4)              // Worker threads (default: num_cpus)
        .fsync_ms(100)           // Fsync interval (default: 200ms)
        .data_dir("/tmp/mydb")   // Data directory
        .build()?;

    db.insert(1, vec![0.1, 0.2, 0.3])?;
    db.insert(2, vec![0.2, 0.3, 0.4])?;
    db.insert(3, vec![0.9, 0.8, 0.7])?;

    let results = db.query(vec![0.15, 0.25, 0.35], 10)?;
    for (id, distance) in results {
        println!("id={id} distance={distance}");
    }

    Ok(()) // auto-shutdown on drop
}

API

Core Operations

// Insert a vector (rejects duplicates)
db.insert(id, vector)?;

// Delete a vector
db.delete(id)?;

// Query nearest neighbors: returns Vec<(id, distance)>
let results = db.query(query_vector, top_k)?;

// Query with vectors inline: returns Vec<(id, distance, vector)>
let results = db.query_with_vectors(query_vector, top_k)?;

// Fetch vectors by ID
let vectors = db.get(vec![1, 2, 3])?;

// Get stats
let stats = db.stats();
println!("buckets={} vectors={}", stats.buckets, stats.vectors);

Async API

db.insert_async(id, vector).await?;
db.delete_async(id).await?;
let results = db.query_async(query_vector, top_k).await?;
let vectors = db.get_async(ids).await?;

Configuration

let db = SatoriDb::builder("my_app")
    .workers(4)              // Worker threads (default: num_cpus)
    .fsync_ms(100)           // Fsync interval (default: 200ms)
    .data_dir("/custom/path") // Data directory
    .build()?;

Environment Variables

Build

cargo build --release

Test

Benchmark (BigANN)

• Requires significant disk (~1TB+ download + converted). See Makefile targets.
• Run make benchmark to download BigANN base/query/ground-truth, convert the base set via prepare_dataset, and execute the benchmark (SATORI_RUN_BENCH=1 cargo run --release --bin satoridb).
• Default ingest ceiling is 1B vectors (BigANN); uses streaming ingestion and queries via src/bin/satoridb.rs.
• On 1B+ (bigger-than-RAM) workloads, the benchmark reports 95%+ recall using the default settings.

License

See LICENSE.

Note: SatoriDB is in early development (v0.1.2). APIs may change between versions. See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.