Zhihong Xu

Title: Innovations of Zhihong Xu

Introduction

Zhihong Xu is a notable inventor based in Sunnyvale, California. He has made significant contributions to the field of technology, particularly in the area of item retrieval systems. With a total of two patents to his name, his work focuses on enhancing the efficiency and scalability of online systems.

Latest Patents

Zhihong Xu's latest patents include a "Distributed approximate nearest neighbor service architecture for retrieving items in an embedding space." This innovative online system maintains item embeddings for various items. As the number of items increases, managing a single index becomes challenging. To address this, the system partitions item embeddings into multiple indices, each corresponding to a specific attribute of the items. For instance, it generates indices for different warehouses offering items. The system allocates each index to a shard to expedite retrieval. When a query is received, it determines an embedding for the query and retrieves an index from a shard based on metadata. The system then selects items based on the distances between the query embedding and the item embeddings in the retrieved index.

Another patent focuses on "Accounting for item attributes when selecting items satisfying a query based on item embeddings and an embedding for the query." This system maintains various items and their attributes, along with an item embedding for each. Upon receiving a query, it generates an embedding for the query and selects a set of items based on similarity measures. The system identifies a specific attribute and generates a whitelist of values based on similarity measures. Items with values outside this whitelist are removed from the selected set, enhancing the relevance of the results.

Career Highlights

Zhihong Xu is currently employed at Maplebear Inc., where he continues to innovate and develop advanced technologies. His work has significantly impacted the efficiency of item retrieval systems, making them more scalable and effective.

Collaborations

Zhihong has collaborated with notable coworkers, including Taesik Na and Guanghua Shu, contributing to various projects and innovations within his field.

Conclusion

Zhihong Xu's contributions to technology through his patents and work at Maplebear Inc. highlight his role as a significant inventor in the field of item retrieval systems. His innovative approaches continue to shape the future of technology.