* `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()`.
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.
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.
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 the dictionary is <= 8 bytes, no data is loaded from the dictionary.
In this case the repcodes weren't set, because they were inserted after the
size check. Fix this problem in general by first setting the cdict state to
a clean state of an empty dictionary, then filling the state from there.
Produces 3 statistics for ongoing frame compression :
- ingested
- consumed (effectively compressed)
- produced
Ingested can be larger than consumed due to buffering effect.
For the time being, this patch mostly fixes the % ratio issue,
since it computes consumed / produced,
instead of ingested / produced.
That being said, update is not "smooth",
because on a slow enough setting,
fileio spends most of its time waiting for a worker to complete its job.
This could be improved thanks to more granular flushing
i.e. start flushing before ongoing job is fully completed.
ZSTD_create?Dict() is required to produce a ?Dict* return type
because `free()` does not accept a `const type*` argument.
If it wasn't for this restriction, I would have preferred to create a `const ?Dict*` object
to emphasize the fact that, once created, a dictionary never changes
(hence can be shared concurrently until the end of its lifetime).
There is no such limitation with initStatic?Dict() :
as stated in the doc, there is no corresponding free() function,
since `workspace` is provided, hence allocated, externally,
it can only be free() externally.
Which means, ZSTD_initStatic?Dict() can return a `const ZSTD_?Dict*` pointer.
Tested with `make all`, to catch initStatic's users,
which, incidentally, also updated zstd.h documentation.
Shaves 492,076 B off of the `ZSTD_CDict`.
The size of a `ZSTD_CDict` created from a 112,640 B dictionary is:
| Level | Before (B) | After (B) |
|-------|------------|-----------|
| 1 | 648,448 | 156,412 |
| 3 | 1,140,008 | 647,932 |
This new parameter makes it possible to call
streaming ZSTDMT with a single thread set
which is non blocking.
It makes it possible for the main thread to do other tasks in parallel
while the worker thread does compression.
Typically, for zstd cli, it means it can do I/O stuff.
Applied within fileio.c, this patch provides non-negligible gains during compression.
Tested on my laptop, with enwik9 (1000000000 bytes) : time zstd -f enwik9
With traditional single-thread blocking mode :
real 0m9.557s
user 0m8.861s
sys 0m0.538s
With new single-worker non blocking mode :
real 0m7.938s
user 0m8.049s
sys 0m0.514s
=> 20% faster
it still fallbacks to single-thread blocking invocation
when input is small (<1job)
or when invoking ZSTDMT_compress(), which is blocking.
Also : fixed a bug in new block-granular compression routine.
now selected for levels 13, 14 and 15.
Also : dropped the requirement for monotonic memory budget increase of compression levels,,
which was required for ZSTD_estimateCCtxSize()
in order to ensure that a memory budget for level L is large enough for any level <= L.
This condition is now ensured at run time inside ZSTD_estimateCCtxSize().
we want the dictionary table to be fully sorted,
not just lazily filled.
Dictionary loading is a bit more intensive,
but it saves cpu cycles for match search during compression.
This is a pretty nice speed win.
The new strategy consists in stacking new candidates as if it was a hash chain.
Then, only if there is a need to actually consult the chain, they are batch-updated,
before starting the match search itself.
This is supposed to be beneficial when skipping positions,
which happens a lot when using lazy strategy.
The baseline performance for btlazy2 on my laptop is :
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 955985 (3.416), 7.06 MB/s , 618.0 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3067341 (3.260), 4.65 MB/s , 521.2 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58095131 (3.649), 6.20 MB/s , 682.4 MB/s
(only level 15 remains for btlazy2, as this strategy is squeezed between lazy2 and btopt)
After this patch, and keeping all parameters identical,
speed is increased by a pretty good margin (+30-50%),
but compression ratio suffers a bit :
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 958060 (3.408), 9.12 MB/s , 621.1 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3078318 (3.249), 6.37 MB/s , 525.1 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58444111 (3.627), 9.89 MB/s , 680.4 MB/s
That's because I kept `1<<searchLog` as a maximum number of candidates to update.
But for a hash chain, this represents the total number of candidates in the chain,
while for the binary, it represents the maximum depth of searches.
Keep in mind that a lot of candidates won't even be visited in the btree,
since they are filtered out by the binary sort.
As a consequence, in the new implementation,
the effective depth of the binary tree is substantially shorter.
To compensate, it's enough to increase `searchLog` value.
Here is the result after adding just +1 to searchLog (level 15 setting in this patch):
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 956311 (3.415), 8.32 MB/s , 611.4 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3067655 (3.260), 5.43 MB/s , 535.5 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58113144 (3.648), 8.35 MB/s , 679.3 MB/s
aka, almost the same compression ratio as before,
but with a noticeable speed increase (+20-30%).
This modification makes btlazy2 more competitive.
A new round of paramgrill will be necessary to determine which levels are impacted and could adopt the new strategy.
params1 was swapped with params2.
This used to be a non-issue when testing for strict equality,
but now that some tests look for "sufficient size" `<=`, order matters.
The deep fuzzer tests caught a subtle bug that was probably there for a long time.
The impact of the bug is not a crash, or any other clear error signal,
rather, it reduces performance, by cutting data into smaller blocks.
Eventually, the following test would fail because it produces too many 1-byte blocks,
requiring more space than buffer can provide :
`./zstreamtest_asan --mt -s3514 -t1678312 -i1678314`
The root scenario is as follows :
- Create context, initialize it using explicit parameters or a `cdict` to pin them down, set `pledgedSrcSize=1`
- The compression parameters will not be adapted, but `windowSize` and `blockSize` will be automatically set to `1`.
`windowSize` and `blockSize` are dynamic values, set within `ZSTD_resetCCtx_internal()`.
The automatic adaptation makes it possible to generate smaller contexts for smaller input sizes.
- Complete compression
- New compression with same context, using same parameters, but `pledgedSrcSize=ZSTD_CONTENTSIZE_UNKNOWN`
trigger "continue mode"
- Continue mode doesn't modify blockSize, because it used to depend on `windowLog` only,
but in fact, it also depends on `pledgedSrcSize`.
- The "old" blocksize (1) is still there,
next compression will use this value to cut input into blocks,
resulting in more blocks and worse performance than necessary performance.
Given the scenario, and its possible variants, I'm surprised it did not show up before.
But I suspect it did show up, it's just that it never triggered an error, because "worse performance" is not a trigger.
The above test is a special corner case, where performance is so impacted that it reaches an error case.
The fix works, but I'm not completely pleased.
I think the current code relies too much on implied relations between variables.
This will likely break again in the future when some related part of the code change.
Unfortunately, no time to make larger changes if we want to keep the release target for zstd v1.3.3.
So a longer term fix will have to be considered after the release.
To do : create a reliable test case which triggers this scenario for CI tests.
