linux-toradex.git/include/linux/decompress/unlzo.h, branch v3.4.10 Linux kernel for Apalis and Colibri modules lib: add support for LZO-compressed kernels 2010-01-11T17:34:04+00:00 Albin Tonnerre albin.tonnerre@free-electrons.com 2010-01-08T22:42:42+00:00 7dd65feb6c603e13eba501c34c662259ab38e70e This patch series adds generic support for creating and extracting LZO-compressed kernel images, as well as support for using such images on the x86 and ARM architectures, and support for creating and using LZO-compressed initrd and initramfs images. Russell King said: : Testing on a Cortex A9 model: : - lzo decompressor is 65% of the time gzip takes to decompress a kernel : - lzo kernel is 9% larger than a gzip kernel : : which I'm happy to say confirms your figures when comparing the two. : : However, when comparing your new gzip code to the old gzip code: : - new is 99% of the size of the old code : - new takes 42% of the time to decompress than the old code : : What this means is that for a proper comparison, the results get even better: : - lzo is 7.5% larger than the old gzip'd kernel image : - lzo takes 28% of the time that the old gzip code took : : So the expense seems definitely worth the effort. The only reason I : can think of ever using gzip would be if you needed the additional : compression (eg, because you have limited flash to store the image.) : : I would argue that the default for ARM should therefore be LZO. This patch: The lzo compressor is worse than gzip at compression, but faster at extraction. Here are some figures for an ARM board I'm working on: Uncompressed size: 3.24Mo gzip 1.61Mo 0.72s lzo 1.75Mo 0.48s So for a compression ratio that is still relatively close to gzip, it's much faster to extract, at least in that case. This part contains: - Makefile routine to support lzo compression - Fixes to the existing lzo compressor so that it can be used in compressed kernels - wrapper around the existing lzo1x_decompress, as it only extracts one block at a time, while we need to extract a whole file here - config dialog for kernel compression [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: cleanup] Signed-off-by: Albin Tonnerre <albin.tonnerre@free-electrons.com> Tested-by: Wu Zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com> Acked-by: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Tested-by: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk> Acked-by: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk> Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 
This patch series adds generic support for creating and extracting
LZO-compressed kernel images, as well as support for using such images on
the x86 and ARM architectures, and support for creating and using
LZO-compressed initrd and initramfs images.

Russell King said:

: Testing on a Cortex A9 model:
: - lzo decompressor is 65% of the time gzip takes to decompress a kernel
: - lzo kernel is 9% larger than a gzip kernel
:
: which I'm happy to say confirms your figures when comparing the two.
:
: However, when comparing your new gzip code to the old gzip code:
: - new is 99% of the size of the old code
: - new takes 42% of the time to decompress than the old code
:
: What this means is that for a proper comparison, the results get even better:
: - lzo is 7.5% larger than the old gzip'd kernel image
: - lzo takes 28% of the time that the old gzip code took
:
: So the expense seems definitely worth the effort.  The only reason I
: can think of ever using gzip would be if you needed the additional
: compression (eg, because you have limited flash to store the image.)
:
: I would argue that the default for ARM should therefore be LZO.

This patch:

The lzo compressor is worse than gzip at compression, but faster at
extraction.  Here are some figures for an ARM board I'm working on:

Uncompressed size: 3.24Mo
gzip  1.61Mo 0.72s
lzo   1.75Mo 0.48s

So for a compression ratio that is still relatively close to gzip, it's
much faster to extract, at least in that case.

This part contains:
 - Makefile routine to support lzo compression
 - Fixes to the existing lzo compressor so that it can be used in
   compressed kernels
 - wrapper around the existing lzo1x_decompress, as it only extracts one
   block at a time, while we need to extract a whole file here
 - config dialog for kernel compression

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: cleanup]
Signed-off-by: Albin Tonnerre <albin.tonnerre@free-electrons.com>
Tested-by: Wu Zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com>
Acked-by: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Tested-by: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Acked-by: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>