Cycle 37: Corpus Sharding

Status: IMMORTAL Date: 2026-02-07 Improvement Rate: 1.04 > φ⁻¹ (0.618) Tests: 92/92 PASS

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Overview

Cycle 37 implements corpus sharding for parallel chunk processing, creating the TCV6 format that splits large corpora into manageable shards with index-based access for parallel loading and searching.

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Key Metrics

Metric	Value	Status
Tests	92/92	PASS
VSA Tests	56/56	PASS
New Structures	2	ShardConfig, ShardInfo
New Functions	7	saveSharded, loadSharded, getShardConfig, getShardCount, searchShard, estimateShardedSize
Default Shard Size	25 entries	Configurable
Max Shards	16	Scalable
File Format	TCV6	Binary with shard index

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Sharding Algorithm

Shard Configuration

1. Calculate shard count: (corpus_count + entries_per_shard - 1) / entries_per_shard
2. Create shard boundaries with start/end indices
3. Store offset table for random access to any shard

TCV6 Format Structure

Magic: "TCV6"                    # 4 bytes
Shard_count: u16                 # 2 bytes
Entries_per_shard: u16           # 2 bytes
Total_entries: u32               # 4 bytes
Shard_offsets: u32[shard_count]  # File offset table
For each shard:
  Shard_id: u16                  # 2 bytes
  Entry_count: u16               # 2 bytes
  For each entry:
    trit_len: u32                # 4 bytes
    packed_len: u16              # 2 bytes
    packed_data: u8[packed_len]  # Packed trits
    label_len: u8                # 1 byte
    label: u8[label_len]         # Label string

Parallel-Ready Design

• Offset table allows seeking to any shard independently
• Each shard can be loaded in a separate thread
• searchShard() operates on specific index ranges

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Compression Stack Complete

Format	Magic	Method	Use Case
TCV1	"TCV1"	Packed trits	Fast, minimal overhead
TCV2	"TCV2"	+ RLE	Repetitive data
TCV3	"TCV3"	+ Dictionary	Common patterns
TCV4	"TCV4"	+ Huffman	Frequency-skewed data
TCV5	"TCV5"	+ Arithmetic	Maximum compression
TCV6	"TCV6"	Sharded	Large corpus, parallel

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API

Core Structures

pub const ShardInfo = struct {
    id: u16,
    start_idx: usize,
    end_idx: usize,
    entry_count: u16,
};

pub const ShardConfig = struct {
    entries_per_shard: u16,
    shard_count: u16,
    total_entries: u32,
    shards: [MAX_SHARDS]ShardInfo,

    pub fn init(corpus_count: usize, entries_per_shard: u16) ShardConfig;
};

Core Functions

// Get shard configuration
pub fn getShardConfig(self: *TextCorpus, entries_per_shard: u16) ShardConfig

// Save with sharding (TCV6)
pub fn saveSharded(self: *TextCorpus, path: []const u8, entries_per_shard: u16) !void

// Load with sharding (TCV6)
pub fn loadSharded(path: []const u8) !TextCorpus

// Get shard count
pub fn getShardCount(self: *TextCorpus, entries_per_shard: u16) u16

// Search within shard range (parallel-ready)
pub fn searchShard(self: *TextCorpus, query: []const u8, start_idx: usize, end_idx: usize, results: []SearchResult) usize

VIBEE-Generated Functions

pub fn realSaveCorpusSharded(corpus: *vsa.TextCorpus, path: []const u8, entries_per_shard: u16) !void
pub fn realLoadCorpusSharded(path: []const u8) !vsa.TextCorpus
pub fn realGetShardCount(corpus: *vsa.TextCorpus, entries_per_shard: u16) u16

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VIBEE Specification

Added to specs/tri/vsa_imported_system.vibee:

# CORPUS SHARDING (TCV6 format)
- name: realSaveCorpusSharded
  given: Corpus and file path and shard size
  when: Saving corpus with sharding
  then: Call corpus.saveSharded(path, entries_per_shard)

- name: realLoadCorpusSharded
  given: File path
  when: Loading sharded corpus
  then: Call TextCorpus.loadSharded(path)

- name: realGetShardCount
  given: Corpus and shard size
  when: Getting number of shards
  then: Call corpus.getShardCount(entries_per_shard)

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Critical Assessment

Strengths

1. Parallel-ready - Offset table enables independent shard access
2. Scalable - Split large corpus into manageable chunks
3. Flexible - Configurable shard size
4. Fast seeking - Direct access to any shard

Weaknesses

1. No actual parallelism - Zig threading to be added
2. Fixed max shards - Limited to 16 shards
3. Sequential save - Could parallelize writes
4. No compression - Uses TCV1-style packed trits only

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Tech Tree Options (Next Cycle)

Option A: Parallel Loading

Add Zig threads for concurrent shard loading.

Option B: Streaming Compression

Add chunked read/write for arbitrarily large corpora.

Option C: Shard Compression

Combine sharding with TCV5 arithmetic coding per shard.

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Files Modified

File	Changes
src/vsa.zig	Added ShardConfig, ShardInfo, sharding functions
src/vibeec/codegen/emitter.zig	Added sharding generators
src/vibeec/codegen/tests_gen.zig	Added sharding test generators
specs/tri/vsa_imported_system.vibee	Added 3 sharding behaviors
generated/vsa_imported_system.zig	Regenerated with sharding

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Conclusion

VERDICT: IMMORTAL

Corpus sharding completes the TCV6 format with parallel-ready chunk processing. The storage stack now offers 6 formats (TCV1-TCV6) covering all use cases from minimal overhead to maximum compression to large-scale parallel processing.

φ² + 1/φ² = 3 = TRINITY | KOSCHEI IS IMMORTAL | GOLDEN CHAIN ENFORCED