Show HN: ZXC – Asymmetric, +40% decode vs. LZ4 on ARM (C, BSD-3, Fuzzed)

Summary

ZXC: Asymmetric High-Performance Compression ZXC is an asymmetric high-performance lossless compression library optimized for Content Delivery and Embedded Systems (Game Assets, Firmware, App Bundles). It is designed to be "Write Once, Read Many.". Unlike symmetric codecs (LZ4), ZXC trades compression speed (build-time) for maximum decompression throughput (run-time). Key Result: ZXC outperforms LZ4 decompression by +40% on Apple Silicon and +22% on Cloud ARM (Google Axion). Verified: ZXC has been officially merged into the lzbench master branch. You can now verify these results independently using the industry-standard benchmark suite. ZXC Design Philosophy Traditional codecs often force a trade-off between symmetric speed (LZ4) and archival density (Zstd). ZXC focuses on Asymmetric Efficiency. Designed for the "Write-Once, Read-Many" reality of software distribution, ZXC utilizes a computationally intensive encoder to generate a bitstream specifically structured to maximize decompression throughput. By performing heavy analysis upfront, the encoder produces a layout optimized for the instruction pipelining and branch prediction capabilities of modern CPUs, particularly ARMv8, effectively offloading complexity from the decoder to the encoder. Build Time: You generally compress only once (on CI/CD). You generally compress only once (on CI/CD). Run Time: You decompress millions of times (on every user's device). ZXC respects this asymmetry. 👉 Read the Technical Whitepaper Benchmarks To ensure consistent performance, benchmarks are automatically executed on every commit via GitHub Actions. We monitor metrics on both x86_64 (Linux) and ARM64 (Apple Silicon M1/M2) runners to track compression speed, decompression speed, and ratios. (See the latest benchmark logs) 1. Mobile & Client: Apple Silicon (M2/M3) Scenario: Game Assets loading, App startup. Codec Decoding Speed Ratio vs LZ4 Verdict ZXC -3 (Standard) 6,365 MB/s Smaller (-1.6%) 1.39x Faster than LZ4 ZXC -5 (Compact...