GZip Application

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

Overview

GZip 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 GZip which provides throughput in terms of GB/s.

This demo is aimed at showcasing Xilinx Alveo U250 acceleration of GZip for both compression and decompression, it also supports Zlib with a host argument switch.

Tested Tool: 2020.2
Tested XRT:  2020.2
Tested XSA:  xilinx_u250_gen3x16_xdma_3_1_202020_1

Executable Usage

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

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

Following is the usage of the executable:

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

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

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

  4. To execute multiple files for compression : ./build/xil_gzip -xbin ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -cfl <files.list>

  5. To execute multiple files for decompression : ./build/xil_gzip -xbin ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -dfl <compressed files.list>

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

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

The default design flow is GZIP design to run the ZLIB, enable the switch -zlib in the command line, as mentioned below: ./build/xil_gzip -xbin ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin -c <input file_name> -zlib 1

The -xbin option mentioned above is optional, you can provide path to your binary file using -xbin option otherwise it will by default map to ./build/xclbin_<xsa_name>_<TARGET mode>/compress_decompress.xclbin

The usage of the generated executable is as follows:

Usage: application.exe -[-h-c-d-xbin-t-l-id-mcr]
       --help,                -h        Print Help Options
       --compress,            -c        Compress
       --decompress,          -d        Decompress
       --test,                -t        Xilinx compress & Decompress
       --compress_list,       -cfl      Compress List of Input Files
       --decompress_list,     -dfl      Decompress List of compressed Input Files
       --test_list,           -l        Xilinx Compress & Decompress on Input Files
       --max_cr,              -mcr      Maximum CR                                      Default: [10]
       --xclbin,              -xbin     XCLBIN
       --device_id,           -id       Device ID                                       Default: [0]
       --zlib,                -zlib     [0:GZip, 1:Zlib]                                Default: [0]