Compress data, gain performance

Posted Feb 6, 2007 12:44 UTC (Tue) by joern (guest, #22392)
In reply to: Compress data, gain performance by walles
Parent article: Embedded Linux: Using Compressed File Systems

Bandwidth != Latency

Reading blocks from disk is expensive because disks have a high latency. Their bandwidth is actually very good. If you want better performance, you have to cut down on the number of seeks, not save bandwidth. Compressing data usually causes more seeks, thereby making performance worse.

If you can come up with a new scheme to reduce the number of seeks by compressing data, the storage world would welcome you heartily.