Go to file
2016-09-06 16:49:34 +02:00
cmake_unofficial don't use variable eval syntax in if() 2016-08-27 15:24:50 +02:00
contrib/djgpp READM fixup 2015-05-26 22:50:59 -07:00
debian debian: changed name lz4->liblz4 2015-08-15 22:26:51 +03:00
examples use gnu c99 to get both c99 and POSIX 2016-08-27 15:24:50 +02:00
lib Merge pull request #236 from inikep/dev 2016-09-06 16:49:34 +02:00
programs removed test artefacts 2016-09-06 16:46:52 +02:00
versionsTest Use https wherever possible 2016-07-08 00:46:02 +02:00
visual disabled <RunCodeAnalysis> for Win32 2016-09-03 07:53:38 +02:00
.gitattributes renamed VS project 2016-09-03 00:51:24 +02:00
.gitignore fix bug #232 at https://github.com/Cyan4973/lz4/issues/232 2016-09-06 10:36:16 +02:00
.travis.yml versionTests require 32-bit gcc libraries 2016-09-05 12:32:33 +02:00
appveyor.yml added appveyor.yml 2016-09-03 00:52:11 +02:00
lz4_Block_format.md Remove whitespace from ends of lines 2016-02-12 22:49:52 -08:00
lz4_Frame_format.md Remove whitespace from ends of lines 2016-02-12 22:49:52 -08:00
Makefile lz4 version source from lz4.h 2016-09-02 22:04:16 -07:00
NEWS Updated Makefile and .travis 2015-09-01 15:59:24 +01:00
README.md Fix wrong link for Travis 2016-04-08 02:54:28 +09:00

LZ4 - Extremely fast compression

LZ4 is lossless compression algorithm, providing compression speed at 400 MB/s per core, scalable with multi-cores CPU. It features an extremely fast decoder, with speed in multiple GB/s per core, typically reaching RAM speed limits on multi-core systems.

Speed can be tuned dynamically, selecting an "acceleration" factor which trades compression ratio for more speed up. On the other end, a high compression derivative, LZ4_HC, is also provided, trading CPU time for improved compression ratio. All versions feature the same decompression speed.

LZ4 library is provided as open-source software using BSD license.s

Branch Status
master Build Status Build status coverity
dev Build Status Build status

Branch Policy:

  • The "master" branch is considered stable, at all times.
  • The "dev" branch is the one where all contributions must be merged before being promoted to master.
    • If you plan to propose a patch, please commit into the "dev" branch, or its own feature branch. Direct commit to "master" are not permitted.

Benchmarks

The benchmark uses the Open-Source Benchmark program by m^2 (v0.14.3) compiled with GCC v4.8.2 on Linux Mint 64-bits v17. The reference system uses a Core i5-4300U @1.9GHz. Benchmark evaluates the compression of reference Silesia Corpus in single-thread mode.

Compressor Ratio Compression Decompression
memcpy 1.000 4200 MB/s 4200 MB/s
LZ4 fast 17 (r129) 1.607 690 MB/s 2220 MB/s
LZ4 default (r129) 2.101 385 MB/s 1850 MB/s
LZO 2.06 2.108 350 MB/s 510 MB/s
QuickLZ 1.5.1.b6 2.238 320 MB/s 380 MB/s
Snappy 1.1.0 2.091 250 MB/s 960 MB/s
Zstandard 0.5.1 2.876 240 MB/s 620 MB/s
LZF v3.6 2.073 175 MB/s 500 MB/s
zlib 1.2.8 -1 2.730 59 MB/s 250 MB/s
LZ4 HC (r129) 2.720 22 MB/s 1830 MB/s
zlib 1.2.8 -6 3.099 18 MB/s 270 MB/s

Documentation

The raw LZ4 block compression format is detailed within lz4_Block_format.

To compress an arbitrarily long file or data stream, multiple blocks are required. Organizing these blocks and providing a common header format to handle their content is the purpose of the Frame format, defined into lz4_Frame_format. Interoperable versions of LZ4 must respect this frame format.

Other source versions

Beyond the C reference source, many contributors have created versions of lz4 in multiple languages (Java, C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.). A list of known source ports is maintained on the LZ4 Homepage.