One of the unique things about Oodle is the fact that its compressors are optimizing for a space-speed goal (not just for size), and the user has control over how that combined score is priced.
This is a crucial aspect of Leviathan. Oodle Leviathan considers many options for the encoded data, it rates those options for space-speed and chooses the bit stream that optimizes that goal. This means that Leviathan can consider slower-to-decode bit stream options, and only use them when they provide enough of a benefit that they are worth it.
That is, Leviathan decompression speed varies a bit depending on the file, as all codecs do. However, other codecs will sometimes get slower for no particular benefit. They may choose a slower mode, or simply take a lot more slow encoding options (short matches, or frequent literal-match switches), even if isn't a big benefit to file size. Leviathan only chooses slower encoding modes when they provide a benefit to file size that meets the goal the user has set for space-speed tradeoff.
Each of the new Oodle codecs (Leviathan, Kraken, Mermaid & Selkie) has a different default space-speed goal, which we set to be near their "natural lambda", the place that their fundamental structure works best. Clients can dial this up or down to bias their decisions more for size or speed.
The flexibility of these Oodle codecs allows them to cover a nearly continuous range of compression ratio vs decode speed points.
Here's an example of the Oodle codecs targeting a range of space-speed goals on the file "TC_Foreground_Arc.clb" (Windows x64):
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Now you may notice that at the highest compression setting of Kraken (-zs64) it is strictly worse than the fastest setting of Leviathan (-zs1024). If you want that speed-compression tradeoff point, then using Kraken is strictly wrong - you should switch to Leviathan there.
That's what Oodle Hydra does for you. Hydra (the many headed beast) is a meta compressor which chooses between the other Oodle compressors to make the best space-speed encoding. Hydra does not just choose per file, but per block, which means it can do finer grain switching to find superior encodings.
Oodle Hydra on the file "TC_Foreground_Arc.clb" (Windows x64):
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When using Hydra you don't explicitly choose the encoder at all. You set your space-speed goal and you trust in Oodle to make the choice for you. It may use Leviathan, Kraken, or Mermaid, so you may get faster or slower decoding on any given chunk, but you do know that when it chooses a slower decoder it was worth it. Hydra also sometimes gets free wins; if you wanted high compression so you would've gone with Leviathan, there are cases where Kraken compresses nearly the same (or even does better), and switching down to Kraken is just a decode speed win for free (no compression ratio sacrificed).
Of course the disadvantage of Hydra is slow encoding, because it has to consider even more encoding options than Oodle already does. It is ideal for distribution scenarios where you encode once and decode many times.
Another way we can demonstrate Oodle's space-speed encoding is to disable it.
We can run Oodle in "max compression only" mode by setting the price of time to zero. That is, when it scores a decision for space-speed, we consider only speed. (I never actually set the price of time to exactly zero; it's better to just make it very small so that ties in size are still broken in favor of speed; specifically we will set spaceSpeedTradeoffBytes = 1).
Here's Oodle Leviathan on the Silesia standard test corpus :
Leviathan default space-speed score (spaceSpeedTradeoffBytes = 256) :
total : 211,938,580 ->48,735,197 = 1.840 bpb = 4.349 to 1
decode : 264.501 millis, 4.25 c/B, rate= 801.28 MB/s
Leviathan max compress (spaceSpeedTradeoffBytes = 1) :
total : 211,938,580 ->48,592,540 = 1.834 bpb = 4.362 to 1
decode : 295.671 millis, 4.75 c/B, rate= 716.81 MB/s
By ignoring speed in decisions, we've gained 140 kB , but have lost 30 milliseconds in decode time.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is the other way around - by making good space-speed decisions, the default Leviathan setting saves 0.50 cycles per byte in decode time, at a cost of only 0.006 bits per byte of compressed size.
Read more about Leviathan and Oodle 2.6.0 in these other posts on my blog :
Leviathan Rising
Everything new and tasty in Oodle 2.6.0
Leviathan performance on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch
Leviathan detailed performance report
Oodle Hydra and space-speed flexibility
or visit RAD to read for more information about the Oodle SDK
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