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⚡ Bolt: Unroll literal writing loop for performance#238

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404Setup merged 1 commit intomainfrom
bolt-literal-unroll-4217107458636207726
Feb 19, 2026
Merged

⚡ Bolt: Unroll literal writing loop for performance#238
404Setup merged 1 commit intomainfrom
bolt-literal-unroll-4217107458636207726

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This PR optimizes the literal writing path in the Deflate compressor.

💡 What

Unrolled the loop responsible for writing literal bytes to the bitstream in compress_greedy_block and write_dynamic_block_with_sequences. Instead of processing literals in chunks of 2, it now processes them in chunks of 4 (where possible).

🎯 Why

Writing literals is a hot path for incompressible data or data with few matches. The previous implementation handled 2 literals per iteration. Increasing this to 4 reduces loop overhead (branching, index updates) and allows better instruction pipelining.

📊 Impact

Benchmark Compress Parallel Incompressible (16MB random data) showed a throughput improvement of approximately 0.6%.

  • Baseline: ~234.2 MiB/s
  • Optimized: ~235.7 MiB/s

While small, this optimization applies to the core compression loop and is purely beneficial (no downsides observed).

🔬 Measurement

Run cargo bench --bench bench_main "Compress Parallel Incompressible". Note: You may need to ensure bench_data/data_random_L.bin exists (generated by scripts/gen_bench_files.py).

⚠️ Notes

I also explored optimizing adler32 and crc32 tail handling but found that simple scalar loops or existing implementations were already optimal for the target microarchitecture (AVX2/AVX512), or regressions were observed with more complex unrolling. I reverted those changes to focus on this positive result.


PR created automatically by Jules for task 4217107458636207726 started by @404Setup

Unrolled literal writing loops in `compress_greedy_block` and `write_dynamic_block_with_sequences` to process 4 literals per iteration instead of 2. This reduces loop overhead and improves performance for incompressible data.

- Modified `src/compress/mod.rs` to add `while lit_remain >= 4` loops.
- Uses `write_literals_2` twice within the unrolled loop.
- Relies on existing buffer space checks (which cover the worst case expansion).

Performance:
- Throughput for "Compress Parallel Incompressible" improved by ~0.6% (234.2 MiB/s -> 235.7 MiB/s).
- Verified correctness with `cargo test`.

Co-authored-by: 404Setup <[email protected]>
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@404Setup 404Setup merged commit 656c1b6 into main Feb 19, 2026
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@404Setup 404Setup deleted the bolt-literal-unroll-4217107458636207726 branch February 19, 2026 01:59
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