Sentence Transformers - Sparse Encoders

university

AI & ML interests

In the following you find models tuned to be used for sentence / text sparse embedding generation. They can be used with the sentence-transformers package and are result of small examples of the package documentation.

Recent Activity

tomaarsen updated a collection 10 days ago

Splade Models

tomaarsen updated a collection 10 days ago

Splade Models

tomaarsen updated a model about 1 month ago

sparse-encoder/splade-robbert-dutch-base-v1

View all activity

tomaarsen

posted an update 3 days ago

Post

3429

😎 I just published Sentence Transformers v5.1.0, and it's a big one. 2x-3x speedups of SparseEncoder models via ONNX and/or OpenVINO backends, easier distillation data preparation with hard negatives mining, and more:

1️⃣ Faster ONNX and OpenVINO backends for SparseEncoder models
Usage is as simple as backend="onnx" or backend="openvino" when initializing a SparseEncoder to get started, but I also included utility functions for optimization, dynamic quantization, and static quantization, plus benchmarks.

2️⃣ New n-tuple-scores output format from mine_hard_negatives
This new output format is immediately compatible with the MarginMSELoss and SparseMarginMSELoss for training SentenceTransformer, CrossEncoder, and SparseEncoder losses.

3️⃣ Gathering across devices
When doing multi-GPU training using a loss that has in-batch negatives (e.g. MultipleNegativesRankingLoss), you can now use gather_across_devices=True to load in-batch negatives from the other devices too! Essentially a free lunch, pretty big impact potential in my evals.

4️⃣ Trackio support
If you also upgrade transformers, and you install trackio with pip install trackio, then your experiments will also automatically be tracked locally with trackio. Just open up localhost and have a look at your losses/evals, no logins, no metric uploading.

5️⃣ MTEB Documentation
We've added some documentation on evaluating SentenceTransformer models properly with MTEB. It's rudimentary as the documentation on the MTEB side is already great, but it should get you started.

Plus many more smaller features & fixes (crash fixes, compatibility with datasets v4, FIPS compatibility, etc.).

See the full release notes here: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/releases/tag/v5.1.0

Big thanks to all of the contributors for helping with the release, many of the features from this release were proposed by others. I have a big list of future potential features that I'd love to add, but I'm

tomaarsen

updated a collection 10 days ago

Splade Models

Collection

The collection includes Splade models from different authors that can be load thanks to the Sparse Encoder modules of Sentence Transformers • 16 items • Updated 10 days ago • 7

tomaarsen

updated a model about 1 month ago

sparse-encoder/splade-robbert-dutch-base-v1

Feature Extraction • Updated Jul 8 • 13 • 3

arthurbresnu

posted an update about 1 month ago

Post

2150

‼️Sentence Transformers v5.0 is out! The biggest update yet introduces Sparse Embedding models, encode methods improvements, Router module & much more. Sparse + Dense = 🔥 hybrid search performance!

1️⃣ Sparse Encoder Models - New support for sparse embeddings (30k+ dims, <1% non-zero)

* Full SPLADE, Inference-free SPLADE, CSR support
* 4 new modules, 12 losses, 9 evaluators
* Integration with elastic, opensearch-project, Qdrant, ibm-granite
* Decode interpretable embeddings
* Hybrid search integration

2️⃣ Enhanced Encode Methods

* encode_query & encode_document with auto prompts
* Direct device list passing to encode()
* Cleaner multi-processing

3️⃣ Router Module & Training

* Different paths for queries vs documents
* Custom learning rates per parameter group
* Composite loss logging
* Perfect for two-tower architectures

4️⃣ Documentation & Training

* New Training/Loss Overview docs
* 6 training example pages
* Search engine integration examples

Read the comprehensive blogpost about training sparse embedding models: https://huggingface.co/blog/train-sparse-encoder

See the full release notes here: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/releases/v5.0.0

What's next? We would love to hear from the community! What sparse encoder models would you like to see? And what new capabilities should Sentence Transformers handle - multimodal embeddings, late interaction models, or something else? Your feedback shapes our roadmap!

I'm incredibly excited to see the community explore sparse embeddings and hybrid search! The interpretability alone makes this a game-changer for understanding what your models are actually doing.

🙏 Thanks to @tomaarsen for this incredible opportunity!

tomaarsen

posted an update about 1 month ago

Post

2946

‼️Sentence Transformers v5.0 is out! The biggest update yet introduces Sparse Embedding models, encode methods improvements, Router module for asymmetric models & much more. Sparse + Dense = 🔥 hybrid search performance! Details:

1️⃣ Sparse Encoder Models
Brand new support for sparse embedding models that generate high-dimensional embeddings (30,000+ dims) where <1% are non-zero:

- Full SPLADE, Inference-free SPLADE, and CSR architecture support
- 4 new modules, 12 new losses, 9 new evaluators
- Integration with @elastic-co , @opensearch-project , @NAVER LABS Europe, @qdrant , @IBM , etc.
- Decode interpretable embeddings to understand token importance
- Hybrid search integration to get the best of both worlds

2️⃣ Enhanced Encode Methods & Multi-Processing
- Introduce encode_query & encode_document automatically use predefined prompts
- No more manual pool management - just pass device list directly to encode()
- Much cleaner and easier to use than the old multi-process approach

3️⃣ Router Module & Advanced Training
- Router module with different processing paths for queries vs documents
- Custom learning rates for different parameter groups
- Composite loss logging - see individual loss components
- Perfect for two-tower architectures

4️⃣ Comprehensive Documentation & Training
- New Training Overview, Loss Overview, API Reference docs
- 6 new training example documentation pages
- Full integration examples with major search engines
- Extensive blogpost on training sparse models

Read the comprehensive blogpost about training sparse embedding models: https://huggingface.co/blog/train-sparse-encoder

See the full release notes here: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/releases/v5.0.0

What's next? We would love to hear from the community! What sparse encoder models would you like to see? And what new capabilities should Sentence Transformers handle - multimodal embeddings, late interaction models, or something else? Your feedback shapes our roadmap!