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114 changes: 105 additions & 9 deletions README.md
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# Lucene cuVS
# cuVS Lucene

This is a project for using [cuVS](https://github.com/rapidsai/cuvs), NVIDIA's GPU accelerated vector search library, with [Apache Lucene](https://github.com/apache/lucene).

## Overview
## Contents

This library provides a new [KnnVectorFormat](https://lucene.apache.org/core/10_3_1/core/org/apache/lucene/codecs/KnnVectorsFormat.html) which can be plugged into a Lucene codec.
1. [What is cuvs-lucene?](#what-is-cuvs-lucene)
2. [Installing cuvs-lucene](#installing-cuvs-lucene)
3. [Getting Started](#getting-started)
4. [Contributing](#contributing)
5. [References](#references)

## Building
## What is cuvs-lucene?

`cuvs-lucene` provides a pluggable [KnnVectorsFormat](https://lucene.apache.org/core/10_2_0/core/org/apache/lucene/codecs/KnnVectorsFormat.html) that uses cuVS to offload vector index build — and optionally search — to NVIDIA GPUs. Because it plugs in through a standard Lucene codec, existing Lucene applications can take advantage of GPU acceleration with minimal code changes and gracefully fall back to the default CPU codec when no GPU is present.

Four codecs are currently provided:

- `Lucene101AcceleratedHNSWCodec` — GPU-accelerated HNSW build with CPU HNSW search. The on-disk format is standard Lucene HNSW, so indexes built on the GPU can be read by any stock Lucene 10.x reader.
- `LuceneAcceleratedHNSWScalarQuantizedCodec` — scalar-quantized vectors for a smaller index footprint.
- `LuceneAcceleratedHNSWBinaryQuantizedCodec` — binary-quantized vectors for an even smaller index footprint.
- `CuVS2510GPUSearchCodec` — GPU-accelerated HNSW build and GPU search
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I don't think we have a codec for CPU build HNSW search. We have codecs for GPU build CPU search and for GPU build GPU search. Can you verify? @narangvivek10

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CPU build HNSW search

I guess here you mean indexing on the CPU and searching on the CPU for HNSW. No, we do not because Lucene itself has codecs and formats available for that. We, however, have a fallback mechanism in formats like, for example, in Lucene99AcceleratedHNSWVectorsFormat that internally refers to Lucene's index and search on CPU logic. This is helpful for people who use our Codec/format, and they do not have a GPU/cuVS available.

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Thank you for the clarification @narangvivek10. So does that mean that the docs above are okay, or should something be changed.


## Installing cuvs-lucene

### Prerequisites
- [CUDA 12.0+](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-archive),
- [Maven 3.9.6+](https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi),
- [CUDA 12.0+](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-archive)
- [JDK 22](https://jdk.java.net/archive/)
- [Maven 3.9.6+](https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi)
- A compatible cuVS installation (26.04 - 26.06). For Maven usage, install the cuVS tarball and add it to your system library load path. See the cuVS [tarball install instructions](https://docs.rapids.ai/api/cuvs/stable/build/#download-extract).

### Maven

To pull `cuvs-lucene` into a Maven project, add the following dependency to your `pom.xml`:

```xml
<dependency>
<groupId>com.nvidia.cuvs.lucene</groupId>
<artifactId>cuvs-lucene</artifactId>
<version>26.06.0</version>
</dependency>
```

### Building from source

```sh
git clone https://github.com/rapidsai/cuvs-lucene.git
cd cuvs-lucene
mvn clean compile package
```
The artifacts would be built and available in the target / folder.

### Running Tests
The resulting artifacts are written to `target/`. To run the tests, first install cuVS and add it to your system library load path, as described in the cuVS [tarball install instructions](https://docs.rapids.ai/api/cuvs/stable/build/#download-extract), then run:

```sh
mvn clean test
```

## Getting Started

The example below plugs the GPU-accelerated HNSW codec into a standard Lucene `IndexWriter`. Once the codec is set on the `IndexWriterConfig`, indexing proceeds exactly as it would with the default Lucene codec, and search uses the stock `KnnFloatVectorQuery`.

Before running it, make sure cuVS is installed and available on your system library load path. The cuVS [tarball install instructions](https://docs.rapids.ai/api/cuvs/stable/build/#download-extract) show how to set this up.

In a Maven project that includes the `cuvs-lucene` dependency shown above, create `src/main/java/com/nvidia/cuvs/lucene/examples/HelloCuvsLucene.java`:

```java
package com.nvidia.cuvs.lucene.examples;

import static org.apache.lucene.index.VectorSimilarityFunction.EUCLIDEAN;

import com.nvidia.cuvs.lucene.AcceleratedHNSWParams;
import com.nvidia.cuvs.lucene.Lucene101AcceleratedHNSWCodec;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import org.apache.lucene.codecs.Codec;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
import org.apache.lucene.document.KnnFloatVectorField;
import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriter;
import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriterConfig;
import org.apache.lucene.store.Directory;
import org.apache.lucene.store.FSDirectory;

public class HelloCuvsLucene {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
AcceleratedHNSWParams params = new AcceleratedHNSWParams.Builder().build();
Codec codec = new Lucene101AcceleratedHNSWCodec(params);
IndexWriterConfig config = new IndexWriterConfig().setCodec(codec);

Path indexPath = Paths.get("index");
float[] embedding = new float[] {0.1f, 0.2f, 0.3f, 0.4f};

try (Directory dir = FSDirectory.open(indexPath);
IndexWriter writer = new IndexWriter(dir, config)) {
Document doc = new Document();
doc.add(new KnnFloatVectorField("vector_field", embedding, EUCLIDEAN));
writer.addDocument(doc);
}

System.out.println("Hello cuVS Lucene ran successfully.");
}
}
```

Run it:

```sh
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH={ PATH TO YOUR LOCAL libcuvs_c.so }:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH && mvn clean test
mvn -q compile org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:3.5.1:java \
-Dexec.mainClass=com.nvidia.cuvs.lucene.examples.HelloCuvsLucene
```

For more examples, including one that indexes and searches entirely on the GPU using `CuVS2510GPUSearchCodec`, please refer to the [`examples/`](examples) directory.

## Contributing

If you are interested in contributing to cuvs-lucene, please read our [Contributing guide](CONTRIBUTING.md).

> [!NOTE]
> The code style format is automatically enforced (including the missing license header, if any) using the [Spotless maven plugin](https://github.com/diffplug/spotless/tree/main/plugin-maven). This currently happens in the maven's `validate` stage.

## References

- [Bring Massive-Scale Vector Search to the GPU with Apache Lucene](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtc25-S71286/) — NVIDIA GTC 2025 session video
- [cuVS and Lucene: GPU-based Vector Search](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiW7iIDFJC0) — Berlin Buzzwords 2024 session video
- [Exploring GPU-accelerated vector search in Elasticsearch with NVIDIA](https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/gpu-accelerated-vector-search-elasticsearch-nvidia) — Elasticsearch Blog
- [Apache Lucene Accelerated with the NVIDIA cuVS 25.06 Release](https://searchscale.com/blog/apache-lucene-accelerated-with-nvidia-cuvs-25.06-release/) — SearchScale Blog