The first On-Device Vector Database: ObjectBox 4.0
The new on-device vector database enables advanced AI applications on small restricted devices like mobile phones, Raspberry Pis, medical equipment, IoT gadgets and all the smart things around you. It is the missing piece to a fully local AI stack and the key technology to enable AI language models to interact with user specific data like text and images without an Internet connection and cloud services.
Recent AI language models (LLMs) demonstrated impressive capabilities while being small enough to run on e.g. mobile phones. Recent examples include Gemma, Phi3 and OpenELM. The next logical step from here is to use these LLMs for advanced AI applications that go beyond a mere chat. A new generation of apps is currently evolving. These apps create “flows” with user specific data and multiple queries to the LLM to perform complex tasks. This is also known as RAG (retrieval augmented generation), which, in its simplest form, allows one to chat with your documents. And now, for the very first time, this will be possible to do locally on restricted devices using a fully fledged embedded database.
We know restricted devices. Where others see limitations, we see the potential and we have repeatedly demonstrated creating superefficient software for these. And thus maximizing speed, minimizing resource use, saving battery life and CO2. With this knowledge, we approached vector search in a unique way.
