ZFP

zfp is a compressed format for representing multidimensional floating-point
and integer arrays. zfp provides compressed-array classes that support high
throughput read and write random access to individual array elements. zfp
also supports serial and parallel (OpenMP and CUDA) compression of whole
arrays, e.g., for applications that read and write large data sets to and
from disk.

zfp uses lossy but optionally error-bounded compression to achieve high
compression ratios. Bit-for-bit lossless compression is also possible
through one of zfp's compression modes. zfp works best for 2D, 3D, and 4D
arrays that exhibit spatial correlation, such as continuous fields from
physics simulations, natural images, regularly sampled terrain surfaces, etc.
zfp compression of 1D arrays is possible but generally discouraged.

zfp is freely available as open source and is distributed under a BSD license.
zfp is primarily written in C and C++ but also includes Python and Fortran
bindings. zfp conforms to various language standards, including C89, C99,
C11, C++98, C++11, and C++14, and is supported on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Quick Start

To download zfp, type:

git clone https://github.com/LLNL/zfp.git

zfp may be built using either CMake or
GNU make. To use CMake, type:

cd zfp
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config Release
ctest

This builds the zfp library in the build/lib directory and the zfp
command-line executable in the build/bin directory. It then runs
the regression tests. The full test suite may be run by enabling the
BUILD_TESTING_FULL CMake option during the build step.

zfp may also be built using GNU make:

cd zfp
make
make test

Note: GNU builds are less flexible and do not support all available features,
e.g., CUDA support.

Finally, zfp may also be installed using package managers such as apt,
brew, conda, dnf, pacman, pip, port, spack, vcpkg, and
yum. For further installation instructions, please consult the
documentation.
For examples of how to call the C library and use the C++ array classes,
see the examples
section.

Documentation

Full HTML documentation is available online.
A PDF
version is also available.

Further information on the zfp software is included in these files:

Change log: see CHANGELOG.md.
Support and additional resources: see SUPPORT.md.
Code contributions: see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Authors

zfp was originally developed by Peter Lindstrom
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Please
see the Contributors Page
for a full list of contributors.

Citing zfp

If you use zfp for scholarly research, please cite this paper:

Peter Lindstrom.
Fixed-Rate Compressed Floating-Point Arrays.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(12):2674-2683, December 2014.
doi:10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346458.

The algorithm implemented in the current version of zfp is described in the
documentation and in
the following paper:

James Diffenderfer, Alyson Fox, Jeffrey Hittinger, Geoffrey Sanders, Peter Lindstrom.
Error Analysis of ZFP Compression for Floating-Point Data.
SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 41(3):A1867-A1898, June 2019.
doi:10.1137/18M1168832.