Consider the resources required for decompression

Posted Jan 23, 2026 9:12 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Consider the resources required for decompression by kmeyer
Parent article: Format-specific compression with OpenZL

While the CPU core has become much better since then (typically a Cortex-M0 or a RISC-V thing, CPU core clock speeds below 40 MHz are now virtually non-existent), the cheap end is still very constrained for RAM and Flash.

Once you're looking at the under $0.25 per MCU range, 16 KiB flash is still common, but 2 KiB RAM isn't that uncommon - and these MCUs are remaining relevant because they're incredibly cheap in high volumes, use very little power and are still reasonably capable.

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Consider the resources required for decompression

Posted Jan 23, 2026 11:54 UTC (Fri) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

Yes, I wouldn't personally care about 16-bit processors nowadays; but there's plenty of low-cost battery-powered IoT devices that can't afford megabytes of always-on DRAM, and I don't imagine energy efficiency will improve enough to change that any time soon. They'll probably have a (relatively) fast 32-bit core that can do plenty of sophisticated computation and data processing, but very little storage, so compression algorithms are both possible and useful.

(E.g. the "mainstream" STM32G0 series has 64MHz Cortex-M0+, and ranges from 8KB RAM / 32KB flash ($0.60 direct from ST) up to 144KB RAM / 512KB flash ($1.75).)

I wouldn't be surprised if this was becoming _more_ relevant over time, since many people see value in monitoring and controlling every device over the network, so they need more microcontrollers.