SPEC CPU2000 Benchmark Description File Benchmark Name: 164.gzip Benchmark Author: Jean-Loup Gailly Benchmark Program General Category: compression Benchmark Description: gzip (GNU zip) is a popular data compression program written by Jean-Loup Gailly for the GNU project. `gzip' uses Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77) as its compression algorithm. SPEC's version of gzip performs no file I/O other than reading the input. All compression and decompression happens entirely in memory. This is to help isolate the work done to just the CPU and the memory subsystem. Input Description: 164.gzip's reference workload has five components: a large TIFF image, a webserver log, a program binary, random data, and a source tar file. With the exception of the random data, these components were selected as a reasonably representative set of things that gzip might be most often used on. The random data is present to test gzip's worst-case behavior. Each input set is compressed and decompressed at several different blocking factors ("compression levels"), with the end result of the process being compared to the original data after each step. Output Description: The output files provide a brief outline of what the benchmark is doing as it runs. Output sizes for each compression and decompression are printed to facilitate validation, and the results of decompression are compared with the input data to ensure that they match. Programming Language: ANSI C Known portability issues: None The header file "io.c" is not automatically included. If your compiler needs this header file, define NEED_IO_H. References: gzip's page at the FSF: http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/gzip.html The online manual is available at http://www.gnu.org/manual/gzip/index.html The format of the .gz files generated by gzip is described in RFCs (Request For Comments) 1951 and 1952.