* Replaced a non-breaking space and an en dash with a plain space and
a hyphen.
* This means the files are simple ASCII and less likely to run into
codepage issues.
access negative compression levels from command line
for both compression and benchmark modes.
also : ensure proper propagation of parameters
through ZSTD_compress_generic() interface.
added relevant cli tests.
negative compression level trade compression ratio for more compression speed.
They turn off huffman compression of literals,
and use row 0 as baseline with a stepSize = -cLevel.
added associated test in fuzzer
also added : new advanced parameter ZSTD_p_literalCompression
clang only claims compatibility with gcc 4.2.
Consequently, recent patch which reserved DYNAMIC_BMI2 for gcc >= 4.8
also disabled it for clang.
fix : __clang__ is now enough to enable DYNAMIC_BMI2
(associated with other existing conditions : x64/x64, !bmi2)
which was not done properly by gcc 4.8
resulting in major performance difference.
ex :
zstd -b1 silesia.tar
before : dec 680 MB/s
after : dec 710 MB/s (without bmi2)
after : dec 770 MB/s (with DYNAMIC_BMI2)
Update code documentation, and properly names a few "magic constants".
Also, HUF_compress_internal() gets a cleaner way
to determine size of tables inside workspace.
* `ZSTD_ldm_generateSequences()` generates the LDM sequences and
stores them in a table. It should work with any chunk size, but
is currently only called one block at a time.
* `ZSTD_ldm_blockCompress()` emits the pre-defined sequences, and
instead of encoding the literals directly, it passes them to a
secondary block compressor. The code to handle chunk sizes greater
than the block size is currently commented out, since it is unused.
The next PR will uncomment exercise this code.
* During optimal parsing, ensure LDM `minMatchLength` is at least
`targetLength`. Also don't emit repcode matches in the LDM block
compressor. Enabling the LDM with the optimal parser now actually improves
the compression ratio.
* The compression ratio is very similar to before. It is very slightly
different, because the repcode handling is slightly different. If I remove
immediate repcode checking in both branches the compressed size is exactly
the same.
* The speed looks to be the same or better than before.
Up Next (in a separate PR)
--------------------------
Allow sequence generation to happen prior to compression, and produce more
than a block worth of sequences. Expose some API for zstdmt to consume.
This will test out some currently untested code in
`ZSTD_ldm_blockCompress()`.
This makes it easier to edit for maintenance and evolutions
(I plan to experiment modifications in huffman decompression functions).
The methology followed seems broadly applicable to other BMI2 modules.
Performance was tracked rigorously at each step,
there is no noticeable loss (nor win) of performance compared to `#include` version.
Note however that 4X decoder variants tend to be extremely sensitive to code alignment.
This source code resulted in pretty good performance for gcc 7.2 and 7.3,
but future changes (even in other parts of the code) might trigger the issue again.
as it's faster, due to one memory scan instead of two
(confirmed by microbenchmark).
Note : as ZSTD_reduceIndex() is rarely invoked,
it does not translate into a visible gain.
Consider it an exercise in auto-vectorization and micro-benchmarking.
On my laptop:
Before:
./zstd32 -b --zstd=wlog=27 silesia.tar enwik8 -S
3#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 66683478 (3.179), 97.6 MB/s , 400.7 MB/s
3#enwik8 : 100000000 -> 35643153 (2.806), 76.5 MB/s , 303.2 MB/s
After:
./zstd32 -b --zstd=wlog=27 silesia.tar enwik8 -S
3#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 66683478 (3.179), 97.4 MB/s , 435.0 MB/s
3#enwik8 : 100000000 -> 35643153 (2.806), 76.2 MB/s , 338.1 MB/s
Mileage vary, depending on file, and cpu type.
But a generic rule is : x86 benefits less from "long-offset mode" than x64,
maybe due to register pressure.
On "entropy", long-mode is _never_ a win for x86.
On my laptop though, it may, depending on file and compression level
(enwik8 benefits more from "long-mode" than silesia).
This makes it easier to explain that nbWorkers=0 --> single-threaded mode,
while nbWorkers=1 --> asynchronous mode (one mode thread on top of the "main" caller thread).
No need for an additional asynchronous mode flag.
nbWorkers>=2 works the same as nbThreads>=2 previously.
to avoid confusion with blocks.
also:
- jobs are cut into chunks of 512KB now, to reduce nb of mutex calls.
- fix function declaration ZSTD_getBlockSizeMax()
- fix outdated comment
Other job members are accessed directly.
This avoids a full job copy, which would access everything,
including a few members that are supposed to be used by worker only,
uselessly requiring additional locks to avoid race conditions.
writeLastEmptyBlock() must release srcBuffer
as mtctx assumes it's done by job worker.
minor : changed 2 job member names (src->srcBuffer, srcStart->prefixStart) for clarity
replaced by equivalent signal job->consumer == job->srcSize.
created additional functions
ZSTD_writeLastEmptyBlock()
and
ZSTDMT_writeLastEmptyBlock()
required when it's necessary to finish a frame with a last empty job, to create an "end of frame" marker.
It avoids creating a job with srcSize==0.
When ZSTD_e_end directive is provided,
the question is not only "are internal buffers completely flushed",
it is also "is current frame completed".
In some rare cases,
it was possible for internal buffers to be completely flushed,
triggering a @return == 0,
but frame was not completed as it needed a last null-size block to mark the end,
resulting in an unfinished frame.
no real consequence, but pollute tsan tests :
job->dstBuff is being modified inside worker,
while main thread might read it accidentally
because it copies whole job.
But since it doesn't used dstBuff, there is no real consequence.
Other potential solution : only copy useful data, instead of whole job