Yandex Open-Sources YaFF Data Format, Saving Up to 20% Server Capacity
Yandex
Yandex released YaFF (Yet Another Flat Format) as open source on June 17, 2026 — a binary data serialization format for high-load services that enables reading data without decompressing it, built as an overlay on Protobuf. Deployed in Yandex's advertising recommendation system, YaFF reduced CPU load by 10–20% while handling hundreds of thousands of requests per second, saving the company nearly 500 million rubles.
Why it matters
A format that cuts CPU overhead by 10–20% on ML-serving workloads is directly applicable to LLM inference infrastructure. Open-sourcing it enables the Russian ML ecosystem to benefit.
Importance: 2/5
Infrastructure open-source release with direct applicability to ML serving efficiency.