Method of hybrid compression acceleration utilizing special and general purpose processors

A hybrid method of compression acceleration, said method comprising:

• performing, using a first hardware accelerator, a CRC, LZ77 compression and static Huffman tree (SHT) encoding on uncompressed input data, to generate a CRC checksum, intermediate data and frequency statistics therefrom;
• building, using software, a dynamic Huffman tree (DHT) based on said frequency statistics;
• determining, using said software, whether to invoke a second hardware accelerator for an input file;
• and
• if said second hardware accelerator is to be invoked, performing, using said second hardware accelerator, SHT decoding and DHT encoding based on said DHT and said intermediate data to generate a compressed output data therefrom.

An apparatus for hybrid compression acceleration, comprising:

• a first hardware accelerator operative to perform a CRC, LZ77 compression and static Huffman tree (SHT) encoding on uncompressed input data, to generate a CRC checksum, intermediate data and frequency statistics therefrom;
• a general purpose processor core containing software code to be executed on said core, said software code when executed operative to build a dynamic Huffman tree (DHT) based on said frequency statistics;
• and
• a second hardware accelerator operative to perform SHT decoding and DHT encoding based on said DHT and said intermediate data to generate compressed output data therefrom.