Zlib Application

This section presents brief introduction about Zlib application and step by step guidelines to build and deployment.

Overview

ZLIB is an Open Source data compression library which provides high compression ratio compared to Limpel Ziev based data compression algorithms (Byte Compression). It applies two levels of compression,

  • Byte Level (Limpel Ziev LZ Based Compression Scheme)
  • Bit Level (Huffman Entropy)

Due to its high compression ratio it takes higher precedence over LZ based compression schemes. Traditionally the CPU based solutions are limited to MB/s speed but there is a high demand for accelerated ZLIB which provides throughput in terms of GB/s.

This demo is aimed at showcasing Alveo U200 acceleration of ZLIB for both compression and decompression.

Executable Usage

This application is present under L3/demos/zlib_app/ directory. Follow build instructions to generate executable and binary.

The host executable generated is named as “xil_zlib” and it is generated in ./build directory.

Following is the usage of the executable:

  1. To execute single file for compression : ./build/xil_zlib -sx ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -c <input file_name>

  2. To execute single file for decompression : ./build/xil_zlib -sx ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -d <compressed file_name>

  3. To validate single file (compress & decompress) : ./build/xil_zlib -sx ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -v <input file_name>

  4. To validate multiple files (compress & decompress) : ./build/xil_zlib -sx ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -l <files.list>

    • <files.list>: Contains various file names with current path

The usage of the generated executable is as follows:

Usage: application.exe -[-h-c-d-sx-v-l-k]
     --help,                 -h      Print Help Options   Default: [false]
     --compress,             -c      Compress
     --decompress,           -d      Decompress
     --single_xclbin,        -sx     Single XCLBIN        Default: [single]
     --file_list,            -l      List of Input Files
     --compress_decompress,  -v      Compress Decompress
     --cu,                   -k      CU                   Default: [0]

Software API Usage

This section provides usage information related to software APIs.

Zlib Compress

Code Snippet below explains the general usage of Zlib compress library.

// Input: Raw File
// Output: Compress File (.zlib)

#include "zlib.hpp"
using namespace xf::compression;

// Create Zlib class object
// a. Initiate OpenCL device setup
// b. Load XCLBIN file to FPGA
// c. Allocate host and device buffers
xfZlib* xlz;
xlz = new xfZlib(single_xclbin);

// File I/O operations
// Invoke FPGA Accelerated Zlib Compress
// xf::compression::compress()
uint32_t enc_bytes = xlz->compress_file(inFile, outFile, input_size);

Zlib Decompress

Code Snippet below explains the general usage of Zlib decompress library.

// Input: Compress File (.zlib)
// Output: Raw File

#include "zlib.hpp"
using namespace xf::compression;

// Create Zlib class object
// a. Initiate OpenCL device setup
// b. Load XCLBIN file to FPGA
// c. Allocate host and device buffers
xfZlib* xlz;
xlz = new xfZlib(single_xclbin);

// File I/O operations
// Internally invokes FPGA Accelerated Zlib Compress
// xf::compression::decompress()
uint32_t dec_bytes = xlz->decompress_file(inFile, outFile, input_size);

Zlib Shared Library (libz.so)

The makefile presented in this demo can be used to create standard libz.so which can be linked against the user applications.

1. make lib (To Create libz.so)
2. Location: ./build/libz.so

Note: This feature is first release it is ideal to use FPGA based compress and decompress for standard compliance.