sparse-emb-util 0.2.1

Utilities for sparse embedding processing using Rust + Python.

Sparse Emb Util

Efficient Sparse Embedding Utilities for IR Research

Rust + PyO3 + Maturin | Multi-threaded | NumPy Compatible

🔬 This library is part of the official implementation of
LightRetriever: A LLM-based Hybrid Retrieval Architecture with 1000× Faster Query Inference.

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Introduction

sparse_emb_util is a high-performance Python extension written in Rust, designed to efficiently process sparse embeddings in sparse retrieval systems. It enables:

• Multi-threaded quantization of float16/float32 sparse vectors
• Conversion to JSON or pseudo-text format
• Regex-based and Unicode-based multilingual tokenization
• Lightweight answer annotation via substring token match

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Installation

Install from PyPI

pip install sparse_emb_util

Or build from source:

pip install maturin
git clone https://github.com/ma787639046/sparse_emb_util.git
cd sparse_emb_util
maturin develop --release

API Overview

Converter: Multi-threaded Quantization of Float16/Float32 Sparse Vectors

from sparse_emb_util import Converter
import numpy as np

converter = Converter(vocab_dict={0: "the", 1: "world"})
reps = np.array([[0.2, 0.8]], dtype=np.float32)

# Convert to quantized JSON (`json_reps == {'the': 20, 'world': 80}`)
json_reps = converter.convert_sparse_reps_to_json(reps, convert_id_to_token=True)

# Convert to pseudo text (`text_reps == the the ... (Repeat x20) world world world ... (Repeat x80)`)
text_reps = converter.convert_sparse_reps_to_pseudo_text(reps, convert_id_to_token=True)

Converter Methods

Method	Input Type	Output	Description
convert_sparse_reps_to_json	np.ndarray[np.float32]	List[Dict[str, int]]	Convert float32 sparse vectors to quantized JSON format
convert_sparse_reps_to_json_f32	np.ndarray[np.float32]	List[Dict[str, int]]	Same as above, explicitly for float32
convert_sparse_reps_to_json_f16	np.ndarray[np.float16]	List[Dict[str, int]]	Convert float16 sparse vectors to quantized JSON format
convert_sparse_reps_to_pseudo_text	np.ndarray[np.float32]	List[str]	Convert float32 sparse vectors to quantized pseudo text
convert_sparse_reps_to_pseudo_text_f32	np.ndarray[np.float32]	List[str]	Same as above, explicitly for float32
convert_sparse_reps_to_pseudo_text_f16	np.ndarray[np.float16]	List[str]	Convert float16 sparse vectors to quantized pseudo text
convert_json_reps_to_pseudo_text	List[Dict[str, int]]	List[str]	Convert JSON representations back into pseudo-text format

Optional kwargs (supported by all functions):

• quantization_factor: Quantization Factor for upscale before flooring (e.g., 100)

• convert_id_to_token: Whether to use vocab_dict to convert IDs to strings

• allow_negative_values: Allow neg_ prefixed keys

• negative_prefix: Customize the prefix for negative values

RegexTokenizer: Regex-Based Tokenization

Mimics Facebook DPR / DrQA regex logic.

from sparse_emb_util import RegexTokenizer

tokenizer = RegexTokenizer(pattern=None, lowercase=True, normalize=True, normalization_from="NFD")
tokens = tokenizer.tokenize("Hello, World!")

• Use batch_tokenize() for multiple strings

• Callable: tokenizer(["string1", "string2"])

ICUWordPreTokenizer: Unicode-Aware Tokenizer

Uses ICU4X for multilingual word boundary detection.

from sparse_emb_util import ICUWordPreTokenizer

tokenizer = ICUWordPreTokenizer(stopword_sets={"the", "is"})
tokens = tokenizer.tokenize("これは日本語とEnglishの混合文です。")

• Supports control-sequence removal, stopword filtering, and lowercasing

• Use batch_tokenize() or __call__() for batched input

QAAnnotator: Question-Answer Relevance Judging

Match answers against pre-tokenized corpus via multi-thread sub-list matching for simple QA supervision.

from sparse_emb_util import QAAnnotator

annotator = QAAnnotator(
    docid_to_tokenized_corpus={"docid1": ["hello", "world", "my", "friend", "!"]},
    pattern=None,
    lowercase=True,
    normalize=True,
    normalization_from="NFD"
)

# ["hello", "world"] is a sub-list of ["hello", "world", "my", "friend", "!"]
# Return `{"qid1": {"docid1": 1}}`
qrels = annotator.annotate(
    qid_to_docids={"qid1": ["docid1"]},
    qid_to_answers={"qid1": ["hello", "world"]}
)

# ["hi", "friend"] is not a sub-list of ["hello", "world", "my", "friend", "!"]
# Return `{"qid1": {"docid1": 0}}`
qrels = annotator.annotate(
    qid_to_docids={"qid1": ["docid1"]},
    qid_to_answers={"qid1": ["hi", "friend"]}
)

Citation

If you use this library, please cite the following paper:

@misc{Ma2025LightRetriever,
    title={LightRetriever: A LLM-based Hybrid Retrieval Architecture with 1000x Faster Query Inference}, 
    author={Guangyuan Ma and Yongliang Ma and Xuanrui Gou and Zhenpeng Su and Ming Zhou and Songlin Hu},
    year={2025},
    eprint={2505.12260},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.IR},
    url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12260}, 
}