v.23.8Experimental Feature

Add Experimental HNSW Support for Approximate Neighbor Search

Add experimental support for HNSW as approximate neighbor search method. #53447 (Davit Vardanyan). This is currently intended for those who continue working on the implementation. Do not use it.
Add experimental support for HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) as an approximate nearest neighbor search method in ClickHouse.

Why it matters

Introduce an approximate neighbor search method using HNSW to enable faster similarity searches in high-dimensional data. This feature aims to improve query performance for relevant use cases involving nearest neighbor searches, although it is currently experimental and intended for development purposes only.

How to use it

This feature is experimental and currently not recommended for production use. Users working on the implementation or testing can enable and test the HNSW approximate neighbor search method as part of the ClickHouse environment; specific usage details and parameters will be refined in upcoming updates.