NX842 user space in AIX 7.1 on Power8

[k3it]

Hello Bulent

Do you have any information about availability of user space compression tools for AIX or RHEL linux running on the Power8 platform?

I am familiar with the DB2 for AIX hw compression feature per https://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP102732

we are interested in a more generic use for compressing large volumes of text files on the Power8. It appears that the required kernel hardware hooks may be available in AIX 7.1 TL3 and higher

I would appreciate your feedback

[abalib]

@k3it I am not aware of any AIX user space tools. But let me find out more and get back to you.

[abalib]

@k3it I sent a note AIX development.

By the way, 842 algorithm is not particularly good at text files. You might get about 60% of the original. But the throughput is quite good: 2 socket machine can comp or decomp at a peak of 60-70 GByte/s.

There is a gzip engine on the P9 chip with better compression ratio; file sizes are about 10-15% bigger than that of gzip software with default switches. Although the P9 software is not ready yet

[k3it]

I see. thanks for the info. If you hear something back re AIX please let me know. I've also tried pigz which works well and compiles easily, but CPU based..

[abalib]

Pigz might make sense with so many SMT8 threads available. Pigz man pages say decompress cannot be parallelized which probably doesn't matter in your case.

[abalib]

@k3it Received from AIX developer "AIX exports NX 842 compression and decompression system calls for in memory compression operations, which are suitable for user-space operations.
They're documented here:"
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_71/com.ibm.aix.basetrf1/accel_compress.htm
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_71/com.ibm.aix.basetrf1/accel_decompress.htm

[k3it]

thank you very much for the info on the AIX function calls.