Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques have proven to be effective in integrating up-to-date information, mitigating hallucinations, and enhancing response quality, particularly in specialized domains. While many RAG approaches have been proposed to enhance large language models through query-dependent retrievals, these approaches still suffer from their complex implementation and prolonged response times. Typically, a RAG workflow involves multiple processing steps, each of which can be executed in various ways. Here, we investigate existing RAG approaches and their potential combinations to identify optimal RAG practices. Through extensive experiments, we suggest several strategies for deploying RAG that balance both performance and efficiency. Moreover, we demonstrate that multimodal retrieval techniques can significantly enhance question-answering capabilities about visual inputs and accelerate the generation of multimodal content using a "retrieval as generation" strategy.

通过研究现有的 RAG 方法及其潜在组合，我们提出了几种既能兼顾性能又能提高效率的 RAG 策略，并证明多模态检索技术能显著增强对视觉输入的问答能力，并使用“检索即生成”策略加速多模态内容的生成。

在检索增强生成中寻找最佳实践