A (2011-04-25): Switched from a traditional spinning-magnets hard drive (Western Digital Caviar Green, 1TB) to a 240 GB OCZ Vertex III SSD; this change gave a small increase in indexing rate, drastically reduced variance on the NRT reopen time (NRT is IO intensive), and didn't affect query performance (which is expected since the postings are small enough to fit into the OS's IO cache.
B (2011-05-02): Concurrent flushing, a major improvement to Lucene, was committed. Before this change, flushing a segment in IndexWriter was single-threaded and blocked all other indexing threads; after this change, each indexing thread flushes its own segment without blocking indexing of other threads. On highly concurrent hardware (the machine running these tests has 24 cores) this can result in a tremendous increase in Lucene's indexing throughput. See this post for details.
Some queries did get slower, because the index now has more segments. Unfortunately, the index produced by concurrent flushing will vary, night to night, in how many segments it contains, so this is a further source of noise in the search results.
C (2011-05-06): Changed how I build the index used for searching, to only use one thread. This results in exactly the same index structure (same segments, same docs per segment) from night to night, to avoid the added noise from change B.
D (2011-05-07): Increased number of indexing threads from 6 to 20 and dropped the IndexWriter RAM buffer from 512 MB to 350 MB. See this post for details.
E (2011-05-11): Added TermQuery, sorting by date/time and title fields.
F (2011-05-14): Added TermQuery, grouping by fields with 100, 10K, 1M unique values.
G (2011-06-03): Added Term (bgroup) and Term (bgroup, 1pass) using the BlockGroupingCollector for grouping into 1M unique groups.
H (2011-06-26): Switched to MemoryCodec for the primary-key 'id' field so that lookups (either for PKLookup test or for deletions during reopen in the NRT test) are fast, with no IO. Also switched to NRTCachingDirectory for the NRT test, so that small new segments are written only in RAM.
I (2011-07-04): Switched from Java 1.6.0_21 to 1.6.0_26
J (2011-07-11): LUCENE-3233: fast SynonymFilter using an FST, including an optimization to the FST representation allowing array arcs even when some arcs have large outputs; this resulted in a good speedup for MemoryCodec, which also speeds up the primary key lookup performance.
K (2011-07-22): LUCENE-3328: If all clauses of a BooleanQuery are MUST and are TermQuery then create a specialized scorer for scoring this common case.
L (2011-07-30): Switched back to Java 1.6.0_21 from 1.6.0_26 because _26 would sometimes deadlock threads.
M (2011-08-20): LUCENE-3030: cutover to more efficient BlockTree terms dict.
N (2011-09-22): LUCENE-3215: more efficient scoring for sloppy PhraseQuery.
O (2011-11-30): LUCENE-3584: make postings bulk API codec-private
P (2011-12-07): Switched to Java 1.7.0_01
Q (2011-12-16): LUCENE-3648: JIT optimizations to Lucene40 DocsEnum
R (2012-01-30): LUCENE-2858: Split IndexReader in AtomicReader and CompositeReader
S (2012-03-18): LUCENE-3738: Be consistent about negative vInt/vLong
V (2012-05-06): LUCENE-4024: FuzzyQuery never does edit distance > 2
W (2012-05-15): LUCENE-4024: (rev 1338668) fixed ob1 bug causing FuzzyQ(1) to be TermQuery
T (2012-05-25): LUCENE-4062: new aligned packed-bits implementations
U (2012-05-28): Disable Java's compressed OOPS (-XX:-UseCompressedOops), and LUCENE-4055: refactor SegmentInfos/FieldInfos
X (2012-06-02): Re-enable Java's compressed OOPS
Y (2012-06-06): Switched to Java 1.7.0_04
Z (2012-06-26): Fixed silly performance bug in PKLookupTask.java
AA (2012-10-06): Stopped overclocking the computer running benchmarks.
AB (2012-10-15): LUCENE-4446: switch to BlockPostingsFormat
AC (2012-12-10): LUCENE-4598: small optimizations to facet aggregation
AD (2013-01-11): LUCENE-4620: IntEncoder/Decoder bulk API
AE (2013-01-17): Facet performance improvements: LUCENE-4686, LUCENE-4620, LUCENE-4602
AE (2013-01-17): Facet performance improvements: LUCENE-4686, LUCENE-4620, LUCENE-4602
AF (2013-01-21): Facet performance improvements: LUCENE-4600
AF (2013-01-21): Facet performance improvements: LUCENE-4600
AG (2013-01-24): Switched to NO_PARENTS faceting
AH (2013-02-07): DocValues improvements (LUCENE-4547) and facets API improvements (LUCENE-4757)
AI (2013-02-12): LUCENE-4764: new Facet42DocValuesFormat for faster but more RAM-consuming DocValues
AI (2013-02-12): LUCENE-4764: new Facet42DocValuesFormat for faster but more RAM-consuming DocValues
AJ (2013-02-22): LUCENE-4791: optimize ConjunctionTermScorer to use skipping on first term
AK (2013-03-14): LUCENE-4607: add DISI/Spans.cost
AL (2013-05-03): LUCENE-4946: SorterTemplate
AM (2013-06-20): LUCENE-5063: compress int and long FieldCache entries
AN (2013-07-31): LUCENE-5140: recover slowdown in span queries and exact phrase query
AO (2013-09-10): Switched to Java 1.7.0_40
AP (2013-11-09): Switched to DirectDocValuesFormat for the Date facets field.
AP (2013-11-09): Switched to DirectDocValuesFormat for the Date facets field.
AQ (2014-02-06): LUCENE-5425: performance improvement for FixedBitSet.iterator
AW (2014-03-11): LUCENE-5487: add BulkScorer
AR (2014-04-05): LUCENE-527: LeafCollector (made CachingCollector slower)
AS (2014-04-25): Upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (kernel 3.13.0-32-generic #57)
AT (2014-06-10): Switched from DirectDVFormat to Lucene's default for Date facet field
AU (2014-07-25): Disabled transparent huge pages
AU (2014-07-25): Disabled transparent huge pages
AV (2014-08-30): Re-enabled transparent huge pages
AV (2014-08-30): Re-enabled transparent huge pages
AX (2014-11-01): LUCENE-6030: norms compression
AX (2014-11-01): LUCENE-6030: norms compression
AY (2014-11-22): Upgrade from java 1.7.0_55-b13 to java 1.8.0_20-ea-b05
AZ (2015-01-15): LUCENE-6179: remove out-of-order scoring
BA (2015-01-19): LUCENE-6184: BooleanScorer better deals with sparse clauses
BB (2015-02-13): LUCENE-6198: Two phase intersection (approximations are not needed by any query in this benchmark, but the change refactored ConjunctionScorer a bit)
BD (2015-03-02): LUCENE-6320: Speed up CheckIndex
BE (2015-03-06): Upgrade JDK from 1.8.0_25-b17 to 1.8.0_40-b25
BF (2015-04-02): LUCENE-6308: span queries support two-phased iteration
BG (2015-04-04): LUCENE-5879: add auto-prefix terms
BH (2015-06-24): LUCENE-6548: some optimizations to block tree intersect
BH (2015-06-24): LUCENE-6548: some optimizations to block tree intersect
BI (2015-09-15): LUCENE-6789 switch to BM25 scoring by default
BJ (2015-10-05): Randomize what time of day benchmark runs
BJ (2015-10-05): Randomize what time of day benchmark runs
BK (2015-12-02): Upgrade to beast2 (72 cores, 256 GB RAM)
BL (2015-12-10): LUCENE-6919: Change the Scorer API to expose an iterator instead of extending DocIdSetIterator
BM (2015-12-14): LUCENE-6917: Change from LegacyNumericRangeQuery to DimensionalRangeQuery
BN (2016-05-23): Fix silly benchmark bottlenecks and re-tune for high indexing throughput
BN (2016-05-23): Fix silly benchmark bottlenecks and re-tune for high indexing throughput
BO (2016-05-25): Fix another benchmark bottleneck for 1 KB docs (but this added a bug in TermDateFacets, fixed on 10/18)
BO (2016-05-25): Fix another benchmark bottleneck for 1 KB docs (but this added a bug in TermDateFacets, fixed on 10/18)
BP (2016-06-13): LUCENE-7330: Speed up conjunctions
BR (2016-07-16): Upgrade beast2 kernel from 4.4.x to 4.6.x
BS (2016-08-17): Upgrade beast2 kernel from 4.6.x to 4.7.0
BT (2016-09-04): Upgrade beast2 kernel from 4.7.0 to 4.7.2
BU (2016-09-21): LUCENE-7407: Change doc values from random access to iterator API
BV (2016-10-18): Fix silly TermDateFacets bug causing single date facet to be indexed for all docs, added on 5/25
BW (2016-10-24): LUCENE-7462: give doc values an advanceExact API
BW (2016-10-24): LUCENE-7462: give doc values an advanceExact API
BX (2016-10-26): LUCENE-7519: optimize computing browse-only facets, LUCENE-7489: Remove one layer of abstraction in binary doc values and single-valued numerics
BX (2016-10-26): LUCENE-7519: optimize computing browse-only facets, LUCENE-7489: Remove one layer of abstraction in binary doc values and single-valued numerics
BY (2016-10-27): Re-enable transparent huge pages in Linux
BY (2016-10-27): Re-enable transparent huge pages in Linux
BZ (2016-10-31): LUCENE-7135: This issue accidentally caused FSDirectory.open to use NIOFSDirectory instead of MMapDirectory for e.g. CheckIndex
CA (2016-11-02): LUCENE-7135: Fixed this issue so we use MMapDirectory again
CB (2017-01-18): LUCENE-7641: Speed up point ranges that match most documents
CC (2017-10-27): LUCENE-7997: BM25 to use doubles instead of floats
CC (2017-10-27): LUCENE-7997: BM25 to use doubles instead of floats
CD (2018-01-31): LUCENE-4198: Allow codecs to index term impacts
CE (2018-02-20): LUCENE-8153: CheckIndex spends less time checking impacts
CF (2018-05-02): LUCENE-8279: CheckIndex now cross-checks terms with norms
CG (2018-05-11): Primary key now indexed with the default codec instead of the specialized Memory postings format
CG (2018-05-11): Primary key now indexed with the default codec instead of the specialized Memory postings format
CH (2018-05-25): LUCENE-8312: Leverage impacts for SynonymQuery (introduced regression for non-scoring term queries)
CI (2018-08-07): LUCENE-8312: Fixed regression with non-scoring term queries
CJ (2018-08-07): LUCENE-8060: Stop counting total hits by default
CI (2018-08-07): LUCENE-8312: Fixed regression with non-scoring term queries
CJ (2018-08-07): LUCENE-8060: Stop counting total hits by default
CK (2018-08-18): LUCENE-8448: Propagate min competitive score to sub clauses
CL (2018-11-19): LUCENE-8464: ConstantScoreScorer now implements setMinCompetitiveScore
CM (2019-04-23): Switched to OpenJDK 11
CM (2019-04-23): Switched to OpenJDK 11
CM (2019-04-23): Switched to OpenJDK 11
CN (2019-04-30): Switched GC back to ParallelGC (away from default G1GC)
CN (2019-04-30): Switched GC back to ParallelGC (away from default G1GC)
CO (2019-05-06): LUCENE-8781: FST lookup performance has been improved in many cases by encoding Arcs using full-sized arrays with gaps
CP (2019-05-24): LUCENE-8770: Two-phase support in conjunctions
CQ (2019-07-02): LUCENE-8901: Load freq blocks lazily
CR (2019-07-09): LUCENE-8311: Compute impacts for phrase queries
CS (2019-09-26): LUCENE-8980: Blocktree seekExact now checks min-max range of the segment
CT (2019-10-14): LUCENE-8920: Disable direct addressing of arcs.
CU (2019-11-14): LUCENE-8920: Re-enable direct addressing of arcs.
CV (2019-11-19): LUCENE-9027: SIMD decompression of postings.
CW (2019-11-21): LUCENE-9056: Fewer conditionals in #nextDoc/#advance
CX (2020-01-13): Switch to OpenJDK 13
CX (2020-01-13): Switch to OpenJDK 13
CY (2020-01-14): Switch to OpenJDK 12
CY (2020-01-14): Switch to OpenJDK 12
CZ (2020-01-17): Move invariant checks of CompetitiveImpactAccumulator under an assert
DA (2020-01-24): LUCENE-4702: compress suffix bytes in terms dictionary
DA (2020-01-24): LUCENE-4702: compress suffix bytes in terms dictionary
DB (2020-02-18): LUCENE-9211: Adding compression to BinaryDocValues storage
DC (2020-09-09): LUCENE-9511: Include StoredFieldsWriter in DWPT accounting
DC (2020-09-09): LUCENE-9511: Include StoredFieldsWriter in DWPT accounting
DD (2020-10-27): LUCENE-9280: optimization to skip non-competitive documents when sorting by field by indexing benchmark datetime field as both points and doc values
DD (2020-10-27): LUCENE-9280: optimization to skip non-competitive documents when sorting by field by indexing benchmark datetime field as both points and doc values
DE (2020-11-06): Move to new beast 3 Ryzen Threadripper 3990X hardware for all nightly benchmarks: 64 cores (128 with hyperthreading), 256 GB RAM, 960 GB Intel 905P Optane, Linux 5.9.2-arch1-1, still OpenJDK 12.0.2+10
DF (2020-11-14): LUCENE-9378: Configurable compression for binary doc values
DG (2020-12-04): Switch to JDK 15 (from JDK 12)
DH (2020-12-09 10:00:13): Add KNN vectors to indexing metrics
DI (2020-12-10): LUCENE-9626: switch to native arrays for HNSW ANN vector search
DJ (2020-12-28): LUCENE-9644: add diversity to HNSW (ANN search) neighbor selection, apparently yielding performance gains to VectorSearch task
DL (2021-01-07): LUCENE-9652: add dedicated method, DataInput.readLEFloats, to read float[] from DataInput, optimizing HNSW KNN
DK (2021-01-09 13:35:50): increase max number of concurrent merges from 3 to 12 for indexing tasks; increase Indexer heap from 8 to 32 GB
DM (2021-01-24 17:25:07): enable BinaryDocValues compression in taxonomy index
DN (2021-01-28): LUCENE-9695: WTF somehow this bug fix hurt vector indexing throughput?
DO (2021-02-25): Upgrade beast3 to Arch Linux 5.11.1
DP (2021-03-14 08:23:12): Move vectors indexing to dedicated (separate) indexing task
DQ (2021-06-24 00:03:16): LUCENE-9613: Create blocks for ords when it helps Lucene80DocValuesFormat
DR (2021-08-24 00:03:22): LUCENE-5309: specialize single-valued SortedSetDocValues faceting
DS (2021-08-26 07:26:00): LUCENE-10067: specialize SSDV ordinal decode
DT (2021-08-27 10:46:59): Upgrade to JDK 16.0.2+7
DU (2021-09-01 00:03:16): LUCENE-9662: CheckIndex should be concurrent
DV (2021-09-03 00:03:25): Use 16 concurrent threads for CheckIndex
DW (2021-09-25 00:03:25): LUCENE-10109: Increase default beam width from 16 to 100
DX (2021-10-05 12:21:08): Upgrade Linux kernel from 5.13.12 to 5.14.8
DY (2021-10-19 08:14:33): Upgrade to JDK17+35, and pass -release to ecj linting
EA (2021-11-24 18:04:23): LUCENE-10062: switch to storing taxonomy Facet ordinals from custom encoding in BINARY DV field, to SSDV field
EC (2022-01-03 18:03:13): LUCENE-10346: specialize single-valued doc values during taxonomy facet counting
ED (2022-01-19 10:17:11): Upgrade arch linux 5.15.10 -> 5.16.1; LUCENE-10375: Speed up HNSW merge by writing combined vector data
EE (2022-01-26 18:03:08): LUCENE-10054: Make HnswGraph hierarchical
EF (2022-02-18 07:54:59): LUCENE-10391: Reuse data structures across HnswGraph#searchLevel calls
EG (2022-02-18 07:54:59): LUCENE-10408 Better encoding of doc Ids in vectors
EH (2022-02-25 18:03:10): LUCENE-10421: Use fixed seed for HNSW search
EI (2022-03-23 18:03:07): LUCENE-10481: FacetsCollector sets ScoreMode.COMPLETE_NO_SCORES when scores are not needed
EJ (2022-04-21 18:03:04): LUCENE-10517: specialize SSDV pure-browse facets for some cases
EK (2022-05-12 18:02:51): LUCENE-10527: Use 2*maxConn for last layer in HNSW
EL (2022-05-19): GITHUB#11610: Prevent pathological O(N^2) merges
EM (2022-06-07 18:02:50): LUCENE-10078: Enable merge-on-refresh by default
EN (2022-07-04 18:02:46): LUCENE-10480: Use BMM scorer for 2 clauses disjunction
EO (2022-07-08 18:02:52): LUCENE-10480: Move scoring from advance to TwoPhaseIterator#matches
EP (2022-07-13 18:02:33): #1010: Specialize ordinal encoding for SortedSetDocValues
EQ (2022-07-23 06:00:31): LUCENE-10592: Build HNSW graph during indexing
ER (2022-07-30 18:02:50): LUCENE-10633: Dynamic pruning for queries sorted by SORTED(_SET) field
ES (2022-08-10): GITHUB#1017: Add new ShapeDocValuesField for LatLonShape and XYShape
ET (2022-09-28): GITHUB#11824: recover performance regression of LatLonPoint#newPolygonQuery
EU (2022-09-29): Update all Arch Linux packages, including kernel from 5.17.5 -> 5.19.12
EV (2022-09-30): Switch from OpenJDK 17.0.1+12 -> standard Arch Linux OpenJDK 17.0.4.1+1
EW (2022-10-06): luceneutil#192: increase the default topN from 10 to 100
EW (2022-10-06): luceneutil#192: increase the default topN from 10 to 100
EX (2022-10-19): Fix CombinedFieldsQuery tasks: https://github.com/mikemccand/luceneutil/commit/56729cf341a443fb81148dd25d3d49cb88bc72e8
EY (2022-10-26): Upgrade to OpenJDK 19.0.1+10
EZ (2022-11-03): Add --enable-preview command-line JVM flag to test new Panama-based MMapDirectory implementation
FA (2022-11-16): GITHUB#11939: fix bug of incorrect cost after upgradeToBitSet in DocIdSetBuilder class
FB (2023-03-01): GITHUB#12055: Better skipping for multi-term queries with a FILTER rewrite
FC (2023-03-14): GITHUB#12198: Reduced contention and increased thread affinity
FD (2023-04-04): Remove --enable-preview JVM flag
FE (2023-04-09): Upgrade Linux kernel 5.19.12 -> 6.2.9 plus all packages
FF (2023-04-11): Upgrade Java 19.0.2+7 to 20+36-2344
FG (2023-05-12): Allocate one NeighborQueue per search for results #12255
FH (2023-05-20): Revert allocate one NeighborQueue per search for results #12255
FI (2023-05-29): Use the incubating Panama API to accelerate KNN indexing and searching #12311