Szip

Szip is an implementation of the extended-Rice lossless compression algorithm. The Consultative Committee on Space Data Systems (CCSDS) has adopted the extended-Rice algorithm for international standards for space applications[1,6,7]. Szip is reported to provide fast and effective compression, specifically for the EOS data generated by the NASA Earth Observatory System (EOS)[1]. It was originally developed at University of New Mexico (UNM) and integrated with HDF4 by UNM researchers and developers.

As the graphs to the right illustrate, the primary gain with Szip compression is in speed of processing. Szip also provides some advantage in compression ratio over other compression methods shown here. These results, including the data presented in the graphs below, are from tests conducted by Pen-Shu Yeh, et al. [1], with the HDF4 Szip integration.