Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!uflorida!novavax!nanook
From: nanook@novavax.UUCP (Keith Dickinson)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Is uncompression faster than disk I/O?
Message-ID: <929@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 89 20:00:35 GMT
References: <14227@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 35

in article <14227@princeton.Princeton.EDU>, nr@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Norman Ramsey) says:
> Someone suggested to me that it might pay off to store my data files
> in compressed format, then uncompress them when I get ready to use
> them.  The claim was that uncompression is faster than the associated
> disk I/O.  so here's the $64 question: has anybody substantiated this
> claim for IBM PC, XT, AT, or PS/2  (remember computation and I/O
> speeds differ on these machines, so your mileage may vary)
> 
> Norman Ramsey
> nr@princeton.edu

Norman. If you were running your software off of floppy, I'd say it's possible.
But even then I'd suggest that you find some way to obtain either the quick
compress routines from PKPAK or fron Sea (Arc). 

A long time ago, someone came out with a program that would compress the
spreadsheet files for Lotus. This worked just fine for saving space, but took
for ever & a day to save.

You inherant problem is that data compression takes up more cpu cycles than
writing the file probably ever could. If your writing to a Hard disk. I'd say
that there was NO way you could compress faster than you could write.

Now with the new, high speed, compression programs. It is possible to do
minimal compression (ie packing) quickly enought that the slow down wouldn't
be noticible, but it would still be a little slower.

Keith

_   /|  | Fidonet  : 369/2 [(305) 421-8593] Brave Mew World South
\'o.O'  | Internet : nanook@muadib.FIDONET.ORG
=(___)= | UUCP     : (novavax,hoptoad!ankh,muadib)!nanook
   U    | USNail   : 433 SE 13th CT. J-202, Deerfield Beach, Fl. 33441
  Ack!  | Disclamer: This message was created by a faulty AI program.
Don't blame me...I voted for Bill'n'Opus in '88