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ClickHouse Stores Vectors as Bit-Plane Subcolumns So a Search Reads Only What It Needs

Oct 24, 2026 13 min read Jay Hubbert

The QBit column stores a float vector bit-transposed into bit-plane subcolumns, and an analyzer pass makes a distance query read only the planes its precision needs.

ClickhouseInternalsVector searchPerformanceSimd

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How ClickHouse Rebuilds a Vector From Its Bit Planes

Oct 24, 2026 21 min read Jay Hubbert

Rebuilding a vector from bit planes is a rounding problem: ClickHouse centre-fills the dropped bits, protects the IEEE zero and infinity cells, and turns precision 1 into a …

ClickhouseInternalsVector searchTypesFloat

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