Building Vectorize, a distributed vector database, on Cloudflare’s Developer Platform

This post details the technical architecture and implementation of Vectorize, a new globally distributed vector database built on Cloudflare's Developer Platform. It explains the core concepts of vector databases, the challenges of high-dimensional data, and the specific techniques used in Vectorize, including Inverted File Index (IVF) for pruning the search space, Product Quantization (PQ) for vector compression, and a result refinement pass for accuracy. It also describes the eventual consistency model and the use of R2 and Durable Objects for storing and managing index data and the write-ahead log.