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Subject: Re: run-length-encoding question (slightly off-topic)

Author: Eugene Nalimov

Date: 18:45:42 03/27/02

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Under x86 Windows you can get 3Gb of address space, not 2Gb.

And out of curiosity: had you tried to compress with DATACOMP.EXE?

Eugene

On March 27, 2002 at 20:27:10, martin fierz wrote:

>On March 27, 2002 at 17:05:09, Dan Andersson wrote:
>
>>It might be so. But huffman decoding can be speeded up quite a bit by using a
>>tad more memory for a decoding cache and lookup table. As long as they fit in
>>the CPU cache it might be possible. But if it's feasible or not depend on A) the
>>different compression ratios B) the penalty for memory accesses. Where A will
>>depend on the nature of the data. And B will depend hevily on A. Modern CPUs
>>have far outstripped the ability of main memory to supply them with data, and
>>HDs are dog slow. Therefore what was true a few years ago must be re-examined. A
>>hybrid scheme might be envisioned. (All depending on the data compressed.) Where
>>the HD files might use a heavier compression. (There are systems that manage to
>>compile source code (or intermediate representations) and start the programs
>>faster than it could load a pre compiled program. Due to the greater size of the
>>executable)
>>And the gain in loading time could be used to do a decompress to RLE or even
>>Huff code in memory. And the resulting memory block might then be further
>>decoded in the cache due to the possible gain due to the smaller amout of memory
>>transferred. Such a multi tiered approach might be possible, and maybe even able
>>to supply the CPU with the data it needs. But the tuning and scheduling of it
>>might be a nightmare. Or a pure joy. This is all fever driven speculations from
>>me. And I know just enough compression theory to be dangerous :) But the main
>>point is that algorithmic approaces that were unfeasible a few years ago. Might
>>fit better in todays  or tomorrows architectures. Boy, this is interesting!
>>
>>MvH Dan Andersson
>
>you definitely have a point here. not only because of everything you say, but
>also because the 8-piece database, compressed by the chinook team, is something
>like 5GB in size. i haven't quite finished the 8-piece database, but my 6-piece
>db is about 10% smaller than theirs. i also have a small improvement to my
>algorithm which could give some more compression. anyway, the point is of course
>that even if it's "only" 4GB in the end, you can never load it into memory, and
>always hit the harddisk. under windows, you can get 2GB, but no more, so if you
>could fit the whole thing in 2GB, you might be able to access it much faster
>even though decompression takes much longer CPU-wise - as long as you don't hit
>the disk it wouldn't really matter.
>unfortunately, i'm preparing for a world championship challenger tournament, and
>don't have too much time to look deeper into this :-( and will stick with the
>simple RLE. i also just saw that the chinook guys are publishing their 8-piece
>db finally, so maybe i'll just throw it all away...
>
>aloha
>  martin



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