Abstract
This paper reviews, analyzes, and proposes a new perspective on the bi-encoder architecture for neural search. While the bi-encoder architecture is widely used due to its simplicity and scalability at test time, it has some notable issues such as low performance on seen datasets and weak zero-shot performance on new datasets. In this paper, we analyze these issues and summarize two main critiques: the encoding information bottleneck problem and limitations of the basic assumption of embedding search. We then construct a thought experiment to logically analyze the encoding and searching operations and challenge the basic assumptions of embedding search. Building on these observations, we propose a new perspective on the bi-encoder architecture called the \textit\{encoding--searching separation\} perspective, which conceptually and practically separates the encoding and searching operations. This framework is applied to explain the root cause of existing issues and suggest mitigation str