INTRODUCING FAST SEARCH IN THE PERPLEXITY SEARCH API

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

Fast Search runs on a Rust-based retrieval and ranking service called Photon that Perplexity built with a small team of engineers and hundreds of agents. It returns 95% of search results in 230 milliseconds or less. Fast Search has a median latency of 160 milliseconds, and it spends less on compute on ranking than Perplexity's default preset. Photon now handles all of the retrieval and ranking across Perplexity, replacing the open-source engine the company was using before.