HARDWARE DATA COMPRESSOR THAT PRE-HUFFMAN ENCODES TO DECIDE WHETHER TO HUFFMAN ENCODE A MATCHED STRING OR A BACK POINTER THERETO

摘要

A hardware data compressor for compressing a block of characters. A first hardware engine finds a match of a string of characters at a current location in the block with an earlier occurrence in the block of the string of characters, determines a first size that is a total number of bits into which the matched string would be Huffman encoded as literals using a Huffman code table, calculates a back pointer from the current location to the earlier occurrence of the string, and determines a second size that is a number of bits into which the back pointer would be Huffman encoded using the Huffman code table. A second hardware engine Huffman encodes the matched string if the first size is less than the second size and otherwise Huffman encodes the back pointer.