Zstd 1.4.9 Released With ~2x Faster Performance For Long Mode

Zstd 1.4.9 is out today as the latest version of this implementation for the Facebook-led Zstandard lossless data compression algorithm. With Zstd 1.4.9 comes a very sizable speed-up when running in its long distance mode.

Zstd previously introduced the "--long" mode to analyze large quantities of data in a timely manner and suitable memory budget. The aim in this mode is to improve the compression ratio for files with long matches at a large distance. With Zstd 1.4.9 the long distance mode is much faster thanks to a number of optimizations that preserve the compression ratio while drastically speeding up the compression time. Test cases are showing this long distance mode being 114~154% faster than the prior point release of Zstd. These new algorithms for the long distance mode appear to be a big win based on all of the data published thus far.

The faster long distance mode is the main highlight of Zstd 1.4.9 but there is also a new experimental decompression feature allowing multiple calls to the Zstd refDDict, improved help message, and other changes.

Downloads and more details on Zstd 1.4.9 via GitHub. Our Zstd compression benchmark test profile is in the process of being updated against this latest release.