luceneutil icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
luceneutil copied to clipboard

Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon mikemccand

Should we rename `fanout` to `efSearch`?

Open mikemccand opened this issue 8 months ago • 3 comments

Is efSearch the more widely recognized name for the parameter to increase the HNSW exploration queue (but not the returned top_k)? At least @benwtrent keeps calling it that :) And I think I've seen it in FAISS papers/source code.

mikemccand avatar Mar 10 '25 12:03 mikemccand

This was a spinoff from https://github.com/apache/lucene/pull/14078#issuecomment-2710460602

mikemccand avatar Mar 10 '25 12:03 mikemccand

I'm not sure, but I think when people use efSearch they are referring to topK + fanout

msokolov avatar Mar 10 '25 12:03 msokolov

Agreed, it's a single number that isn't additive. So, it would be, conceptually, k+fan-out (what lucene util does currently).

benwtrent avatar Mar 10 '25 12:03 benwtrent