Introduction¶
zfp is an open source C/C++ library for compressed numerical arrays that support high throughput read and write random access. zfp also supports streaming compression of integer and floating-point data, e.g., for applications that read and write large data sets to and from disk.
zfp was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is loosely based on the algorithm described in the following paper:
Peter LindstromIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics20(12):2674-2683, December 2014
zfp was originally designed for floating-point arrays only, but has been extended to also support integer data, and could for instance be used to compress images and quantized volumetric data. To achieve high compression ratios, zfp uses lossy but optionally error-bounded compression. Although bit-for-bit lossless compression of floating-point data is not always possible, zfp is usually accurate to within machine epsilon in near-lossless mode.
zfp works best for 2D and 3D arrays that exhibit spatial correlation, such as continuous fields from physics simulations, images, regularly sampled terrain surfaces, etc. Although zfp also provides a 1D array class that can be used for 1D signals such as audio, or even unstructured floating-point streams, the compression scheme has not been well optimized for this use case, and rate and quality may not be competitive with floating-point compressors designed specifically for 1D streams.
zfp is freely available as open source under a BSD license. For more information on zfp and comparisons with other compressors, please see the zfp website. For questions, comments, requests, and bug reports, please contact Peter Lindstrom.