From esr at thyrsus.com Tue Feb 1 00:32:14 2005 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6903087122846181435==" MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Eric S. Raymond To: devel at lists.fedoraproject.org Subject: Space-time tradeoffs (was: Re: radical suggestion for fc4 release) Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:30:53 -0500 Message-ID: <20050201053053.GB13501@thyrsus.com> In-Reply-To: 41FEF17A.30005@nc.rr.com --===============6903087122846181435== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jeff Johnson : > Is memory a bigger problem than cpu? How about broadband vs. dialup? > = > I have no clue where the balance points are. My rpm job is objective = > measurements through insturmentation, and as reliable and stable an = > implementation as possible. > = > Go make up your own answers. OK, here is an answer. = We don't know exactly what the "right" tradeoff between space efficiency and decompression time is. But we *do* know which direction that tradeoff is heading. = Processor clocks are getting cheaper faster than memory is. Memory is gett= ing cheaper faster than disk is. Disk is getting cheaper a *lot* faster than bits-per-second of bandwidth. The "right" tradeoff is to use lots of cheap resources in order to be = able to use fewer expensive resources. Therefore, as these trends = continue, we want to spend processor clocks to decrease use of bandwidth. Thus, bzip2 wins over gzip. -- = Eric S. Raymond --===============6903087122846181435==--