Installing Faiss

** This page is WIP, currently mainly notes **

Standard installs

See INSTALL.md

Compiling the python interface within an Anaconda install

This is useful to make sure the MKL impementation is as fast as possible.

source ~/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate host_env_for_faiss     # an environment that contains python and numpy 

git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss.git faiss_xx

cd faiss_xx

target_dir=$PWD/install_py

# often the system cmake is too old
cmake=path_to_compiled_cmake

$cmake -B build \
    -DFAISS_ENABLE_GPU=OFF \
    -DBLA_VENDOR=Intel10_64_dyn \
    -DMKL_LIBRARIES=$CONDA_PREFIX/lib \
    -DPython_EXECUTABLE=$(which python) \
    -DFAISS_OPT_LEVEL=avx2 \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

make -C build -j 10

(cd build/faiss/python/ ; python setup.py install --prefix $target_dir )

(cd ..; PYTHONPATH=$target_dir/lib/python3.7/site-packages/faiss-1.6.3-py3.7.egg/ python  -c "

Compiling Faiss on ARM

Commands for an ubuntu 18 image on an Amazon c6g.8xlarge machine :

set -e

sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev libatlas3-base
sudo apt-get install clang-8
sudo apt-get install swig

# cmake provided with ubuntu is too old

wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.19.3/cmake-3.19.3.tar.gz

tar xvzf cmake-3.19.3.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.19.3/
./configure --prefix=/home/matthijs/cmake &&  make -j

cd $HOME

alias cmake=$HOME/cmake/bin/cmake

# clone Faiss

git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss.git

cd faiss

cmake  -B build -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-8 -DFAISS_ENABLE_GPU=OFF  -DPython_EXECUTABLE=$(which python3) -DFAISS_OPT_LEVEL=generic -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_TEST\
ING=ON

(cd build/faiss/python/ ; python3 setup.py build)

# run tests

export PYTHONPATH=$PWD/build/faiss/python/build/lib/

python3 -m unittest discover