Perplexity's small model can search an index its big model built.
Perplexity published two open retrieval models on Wednesday, sized 0.6 and 9 billion. Both write into one shared space, so the small one can query the big one's index. The larger model answered 92.4 percent of questions across 18,000 pages of PDF.
Why it mattersIndexing with the big model and searching with the small one cuts your running cost. The MIT licence lets you put either model inside a product you sell.