Compression

libbsc – high performance block-sorting data compressor

libbsc is a high performance lossless data compression project built around block-sorting algorithms. The project provides both the bsc command-line compressor and the libbsc library, which makes the same compression technology available to other software.

The compressor is designed with large files and modern multicore processors in mind. Files are divided into blocks which can be processed in parallel, allowing compression and decompression workloads to make use of multiple CPU cores. The chosen block size affects both memory consumption and compression ratio, giving users some control over the trade-off between resource usage and compression efficiency.

libbsc uses a collection of transforms and entropy coding techniques intended to achieve strong compression while retaining competitive performance. The project is particularly interesting for users dealing with large datasets where compression ratio matters but extremely slow archival compressors are not desirable.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Lossless block-sorting data compression.
  • High compression ratios while maintaining good performance.
  • Multithreaded compression of independent blocks.
  • Parallel processing on multicore processors.
  • bsc command-line compression utility.
  • libbsc library for compressing memory blocks.
  • Configurable block sizes.
  • Optional shared library build.
  • Optional NVIDIA CUDA acceleration.
  • CMake-based build system.

Website: github.com/IlyaGrebnov/libbsc
Support:
Developer: Ilya Grebnov
License: Apache License 2.0

libbsc is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


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