Building Vector Search Engines from Scratch: Storage, Indexing, and High-Performance Retrieval for AI Systems - Softcover

Crossley, Ethan

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798183830620

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Reactive Publishing

Discover the inner workings of modern AI-powered search with Building Vector Search Engines from Scratch.

As vector embeddings transform how we store, retrieve, and interact with data, building a high-performance vector search system has become an essential skill for AI engineers, machine learning practitioners, and backend developers. This book takes you step-by-step through the complete process of designing and implementing your own vector search engine, starting from fundamental concepts and progressing to production-ready architectures.

What You'll Learn:

• Core Storage Strategies: Explore efficient data structures and databases optimized for high-dimensional vector data, including flat indexes, graph-based methods, and quantization techniques.
• Indexing Techniques: Master inverted files, product quantization, hierarchical navigable small world (HNSW) graphs, and other state-of-the-art indexing approaches that balance speed, memory usage, and accuracy.
• High-Performance Retrieval: Implement approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, similarity metrics, reranking, and hybrid search systems that deliver sub-millisecond query times at scale.
• AI System Integration: Learn how to integrate vector search into real-world applications such as semantic search, recommendation engines, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for LLMs, and multimodal AI systems.
• Performance Optimization and Scaling: Address challenges in distributed systems, hardware acceleration (CPU/GPU), monitoring, and maintaining relevance as your data grows.

Written with clear explanations, practical code examples in Python, and architectural diagrams, this hands-on guide emphasizes building systems that are both theoretically sound and practically deployable. Whether you're developing the next generation of search infrastructure or enhancing existing AI applications, you'll gain the deep technical foundation needed to move beyond off-the-shelf solutions.

Ideal for intermediate to advanced developers familiar with machine learning concepts who want to understand vector search at a systems level.

Start building robust, scalable vector search engines today.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798183830620
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 490
• Editor: Schwartz Alice