Fixed RAG Compression
A fixed compression layer in a RAG pipeline collapses the reader-scaling trend that the uncompressed setup shows.
Overview
Retrieval-augmented pipelines often compress retrieved context before it reaches the reader, with the compression budget held fixed across readers so the comparison stays controlled.
What we found
Fixing the budget removes the effect the comparison is meant to measure. Under an uncompressed pipeline, larger readers do better with more context; under a fixed compression layer, that trend flattens, so the measured benefit of a stronger reader is an artifact of where the compression budget was set.