VPC3: a fast and effective trace-compression algorithm

Abstract

Trace files are widely used in research and academia to study the behavior of programs. They are simple to process and guarantee repeatability. Unfortunately, they tend to be very large. This paper describes vpc3, a fundamentally new approach to compressing program traces. Vpc3 employs value predictors to bring out and amplify patterns in the traces so that conventional compressors can compress them more effectively. In fact, our approach not only results in much higher compression rates but also provides faster compression and decompression. For example, compared to bzip2, vpc3's geometric mean compression rate on SPECcpu2000 store address traces is 18.4 times higher, compression is ten times faster, and decompression is three times faster.