Master/slave compression engine

A system for a hardware master/slave compression engine, the system comprising:

• a first buffer, configured to load a first data portion of a file;
• a second buffer, configured to load a second data portion of the file;
• a plurality of slave search units (SSUs), configured to acquire a first search string from the second buffer and to perform a plurality of parallel searches for the acquired first search string in the first buffer;
• and
• a master search unit (MSU), operatively connected to the plurality of SSUs and configured to receive and to process a plurality of results from the plurality of parallel searches performed by the SSUs,
• wherein the hardware master/slave compression engine is further configured to output a literal or a length-distance entity based on the plurality of results, to shift the first buffer and the second buffer by a number of characters in a row equal to the length of a longest matching string of characters of the acquired first search string, to acquire a second search string from the second buffer of the file, and to compress the file by replacing one selected from the group consisting of a portion of or all of the second data portion of the file with the literal or length-distance entity.

A computing system for master/slave compression of a file, the computing system comprising:

• a processor;
• a hardware master/slave compression engine, wherein the hardware master/slave compression engine resides on the same die as the processor;
• a memory;
• a storage device;
• and
• software instructions stored in the memory for enabling the computer system under control of the processor, to:
• reset a counter;
• load a first data portion of the file in a first buffer;
• load a second data portion of the file in a second buffer;
• acquire a first search string from the second buffer;
• perform a plurality of parallel searches for the acquired first search string in the first buffer;
• process the plurality of results from the plurality of parallel searches;
• output a literal or a length-distance entity based on the plurality of results of the plurality of parallel searches for the acquired first search string;
• shift the first buffer and the second buffer by a number of characters in a row equal to the length of a longest matching string of characters of the acquired first search string;
• acquire a second search string from the second buffer of the file;
• and
• compress the file by replacing one selected from the group consisting of a portion of or all of the second data portion of the file with the literal or length-distance entity.