The Linux ZRAM module for creating compressed block devices in RAM could be on the edge of a nice I/O compression performance boost.

Gao Xu of the HONOR company posted a patch to the Linux kernel mailing list for optimizing the LZ4 dictionary compression performance with ZRAM. According to the engineer, the few dozen lines of code patch can improve the dictionary compression performance by over 50% in ZRAM I/O tests.

"Calling `LZ4_loadDict()` repeatedly in Zram causes significant overhead due to its internal dictionary pre-processing. This commit introduces a template stream mechanism to pre-process the dictionary only once when the dictionary is initially set or modified. It then efficiently copies this state for subsequent compressions.

This optimization improves LZ4 dictionary compression performance by over 50% in Zram I/O tests."

[1]The patch is now out for review as what looks like a nice compression performance boost for Linux ZRAM usage.



[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ae51966c3cb445e9983230243bb6a5b2@honor.com/