SEGGER emCompress

emCompress is a compression system that is able to reduce the storage requirements of data that must be embedded into an application. Compress on the host in advance, decompress in the target on demand.

A compressed version of the data is stored in the flash memory of the target system. In the target, a small, fast decompressor can decompress the data on-the-fly, when ever it is required. The decompressor can decompress into RAM or send the output to an application defined function. It can be used with little or no RAM on the target side for decompression; the amount of RAM available to the decompressor is taken into account during compression and an appropriate compression algorithm is automatically selected.

Features

• Highly efficient compression
• Small decompressor ROM footprint
• Fixed decompressor RAM use, chosen when compressing
• Wide range of codecs to choose from
• Automatic selection of best codec for each file
• Easy-to-understand and simple-to-use
• Group mode compression boosts small file compression ratios
• Simple to configure and integrate
• Royalty free

Why should I use emCompress?

Simple: emCompress is able to significantly reduce the amount of storage required for data in embedded systems, by compressing it during compile time. This can save flash, cost, data transmission times or even make it possible to fit the application into the available space.

Typical uses of emCompress are:

• Configuration bitstreams to program FPGA and CPLD devices.
• Permanent files for embedded web server static content.
• Upgrading firmware using a compressed image.
• Storing user interface messages for multiple languages.

Software only grows in one direction

With increasing complexity of today's devices, customers expect firmware updates over the life of a device. It's important to be able to replace both firmware images and FPGA configuration bitstreams in the field. Typically, firmware upgrades and other static content only grow in size over the lifetime of a device: features are added to software, not taken away, it's just what happens. Using quickly-written ad-hoc utilities to convert content directly to compilable code (possibly with some form of simple compression) is usual, but it's towards the end of a project when you realise that the static content just won't fit into your device with the baggage of new firmware features.

emCompress offers a professional solution

This is where emCompress can help. emCompress will compress your data on a workstation so that it takes much less space on the target device. The decompressors are tiny in ROM, but the benefits of compression means you reclaim more space in your device for the features you're trying to add.

Because emCompress decompressors can be tailored for RAM use, you can decompress static content early in your application and not devote RAM to decompression buffers. For instance, configuring an FPGA is one of the first things that an application will do, decompressing a bitstream and sending it to the FPGA. In this case, a small decompression buffer can be held on the stack even though the compressed bitstream is hundreds of kilobytes in size: the temporary buffer is a known size that is configured at compression time, and that RAM is free to reuse the moment any decompression completes.

Or course, emCompress is not limited to these applications, it effective at reducing any type of stored content.

Group mode offers even better compression

emCompress can boost compression ratios using group mode when compressing many small files. In group mode, the uncompressed source files are concatenated and compressed as a whole, increasing the opportunities for the compressor to find ways to compress the combined data. This proves especially effective when compressing small, static HTML files for embedded web servers. Decompression for group-mode compression is identical in operation to single-file compression, giving you the flexibility to choose how to compress and decompress your data.

Why choose emCompress?

In contrast to many compression utilities, emCompress does not seek to provide the ultimate in compression ratios and decompression speeds. Rather, emCompress focuses on the memory available to run decompression on the target and choose the best compressor that will work to meet those constraints. It's easy to use, it's simple to integrate, and as with many other SEGGER software products, SEGGER have the confidence to build it into our own hardware products which are in daily use by hundreds of thousands of satisfied users worldwide.

What's in emCompress?

emCompress ships with the compression application to run on Windows, the source code for all decompressors, and a comprehensive user manual.

emCompress is written in well-commented ANSI C and is both compiler and target independent. In contrast to most compression libraries, emCompress is not covered by an open-source or required-attribution license and can be integrated in any commercial or proprietary product without the obligation to disclose the combined source.

Because the decompressors are provided as source code, emCompress decompressors can be inspected by auditors. The compression utility's source is available as an additional module.

Performance and Memory Footprint

ROM use

The amount of ROM that emCompress uses for decompression varies with the codec selected. The table below measures the total ROM required for a single decoder, including all supporting functions and excluding integrity checks.

Some of the codecs share common code. Hence, if your compressed bitstreams only use DEFLATE, the amount of ROM required is easily read off from the table. If you are using more than one codec in your application, the amount of ROM is less than the sum of the used codecs.

Adding a table-driven CRC32 integrity check adds about 1.1 KB of code to the total emCompress ROM requirement.

The following table lists the ROM requirements per codec.

RAM use

The amount of RAM that emCompress uses is under complete control as it is specified at compression time. Typically, 2KB of temporary RAM for decompression already yield good compression ratios, but even without temporary RAM, good compression ratios can be achieved in many cases. No static RAM is required, stack usage is well below 512 bytes.

Performance

The compression ratio and decompression speed are dependent on various factors and may vary in each case.

The main factors are:

• The data to be compressed
• The data size and redundancy
• The compression codec
• The decompression workspace size

emCompress can achieve best-possible compression ratios of 90% and above as well as decompression speeds of up to 5 MByte/sec.

FAQ