LZFSE compression library and command line tool

by ingve • 10 years ago

48 16 10 years ago

kvark• 10 years ago

It targets similar compression rates at higher compression and decompression speed compared to deflate using zlib

I don't doubt this is true, but I'd expect a little benchmark on the README as a proof. It would be interesting to see how LZFSE compares to LZ4 (https://cyan4973.github.io/lz4/).

gribbly• 10 years ago

It's tested against a wide range of other compressors in this thread: http://encode.ru/threads/2221-LZFSE-New-Apple-Data-Compressi...

The results are kind of underwhelming.

muizelaar• 10 years ago

https://quixdb.github.io/squash-benchmark/unstable/ in particular paints a pretty good picture of the current landscape. It seems like ZStd is usually better than LZFSE and LZ4 is pretty competitive with LZFSE:LZVN.

kvestyn• 10 years ago

Quoting the github page: "This is a reference C implementation". I read that as "not the optimized version used in Apple's libCompression."

gbrown_• 10 years ago

Same link posted a few days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11922484

Previous (but brief) discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9689471

jakozaur• 10 years ago

Based on internet bechmarks, zstd looks like strictly better option: https://github.com/Cyan4973/zstd

eridius3• 10 years ago

Those benchmarks don't include energy efficiency, which was a primary design goal of LZFSE. I also don't see LZFSE on that page anyway, which makes it kind of hard to compare.

s34gull• 10 years ago

The most interesting discussion of this compression algorithm that I've found is in a presentation from WWDC 2015 http://devstreaming.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/7125ovmdf36/7.... The goal is not strictly faster or higher compression ratio, but a reasonably balanced mix of the two at lower energy consumption (since the original target was iOS).

wmf2• 10 years ago

Note that energy efficiency is pretty proportional to performance, so it's very likely that a faster algorithm (e.g. LZ4) would also be more efficient.

(Back when I was working on energy efficiency, people kept trying to invent "low-power compilers", but they kept discovering that the fastest code is also the most efficient.)

salem• 10 years ago

There was an Apple presentation that claimed lower decompression energy usage:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2015/712/?time=4...

On an iOS device this is a pretty hot path, since it's used to decompress the asset catalog, including some images, so most of your apps on iOS probably already use this algorithm.

devy• 10 years ago

Pardon me if this was already answered. Is this the official implementation of LZFSE from Apple? The main contributor for the Github repo @ebainville is listed in Cupertino, CA.

wmf2• 10 years ago

LZFSE compression library and command line tool

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