Fast Ziv-Lempel decoding using RISC architecture
David Vivian Jaggar · UC Research Repository (University of Canterbury) · 1989
Compression is becoming more important as more information is stored on, and transferred between computers. Some applications of compression require high throughput, such as the access to a hard disk drive or a Local Area Network. The Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) is a general purpose VLSI microprocessor with a very competitive price/performance ratio. Its architecture is particularly suitable for applications requiring frequent bitwise operations. It has been used here to construct a fast and inexpensive text decompressor. The algorithm used is a type of Ziv-Lempe! compression scheme and has the properties of good compression and a fast decode strategy. The resulting device is very fast, yet inexpensive. It can operate at the speed of Local Area Networks and hard disk drives and lends itself to applications where text is stored once and read many times.