Inside the Pinecone

This post details Pinecone's evolution from an in-memory graph-based index to a per-slab adaptive indexing strategy (Ananas, PQFS, and IVF) on serverless infrastructure. It discusses the challenges of implementing graph-based search in a production-grade database, the decision to build a custom graph index instead of using HNSW, and the development of a new storage engine ('memkey') based on a bitcask-like design to replace RocksDB, offering significant performance improvements and cost reductions. The post also highlights the company's transition from a C++/Python codebase to Rust for improved performance, memory management, and developer velocity, leading to a dramatic decrease in operational incidents.