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7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

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Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#61

Post by arp242 »

rf15 wrote: post #13
d33 wrote: post #10

I worry that 7-Zip is going to lose relevance because lack of zstd support. zlib's performance is intolerable for large files and zlib-ng's SIMD implementation only helps here a bit. Which is a shame, because 7-Zip is a pretty amazing container format, especially with its encryption and file splitting capabilities.

Not that many people care about zstd; I would assume most 7-zip users care about the convenience of the gui.

It's been a long time since I used Windows, but back in the day I used 7-Zip exactly because it could open more or less $anything. That's also why we installed it on many customer computers.

On Linux bsdtar/libarchive gives a similar experience: "tar xf file" works on most things.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#62

Post by notepad0x90 »

dikei wrote: post #29
d33 wrote: post #10

I worry that 7-Zip is going to lose relevance because lack of zstd support. zlib's performance is intolerable for large files and zlib-ng's SIMD implementation only helps here a bit. Which is a shame, because 7-Zip is a pretty amazing container format, especially with its encryption and file splitting capabilities.

I use ZSTD a ton in my programming work where efficiency matters. But for sharing files with other people, ZIP is still king. Even 7z or RAR is niche. Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger.

I don't know about, had a dicey situation recently where powershell's compress-archive couldn't handle archives >4GB and had to use 7zip. it is more reliable and you can ship 7za.exe or create self-extracting archives (wish those were more of a thing outside of the windows world).

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#63

Post by mauvehaus »

easton wrote: post #44
cesarb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger. You can use ZSTD with ZIP files too! It's compression method 93 (see https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT which is the official ZIP file specification). Which reveals that "everyone can open a ZIP file" is a lie. Sure, everyone can open a ZIP file, as long as that file uses only a limited subset of the Z…

> new Office files I know what you mean, I’m not being pedantic, but I just realized it’s been 19 years. I wonder when we’ll start calling them “Office files”.

> I wonder when we’ll start calling them “Office files”.

Probably around the same time the save icon becomes something other than a 3 1/2" floppy disk.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#64

Post by monocasa »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #60
monocasa wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it seems it's quite clear that a single process and all of its threads will just be assigned to a single processor group, and it'll take manual work for that process to use more than 64 cores. The difference is just that processes will be assigned a processor group more or less randomly by default, so they'll be balanced on the process level, but not the thread level. Not super helpful for a lot of software s…

> it'll take manual work for that process to use more than 64 cores. No it won't.

It absolutely will. Your process is only assigned a single processor group at process creation time. The only difference now is that it's by default assigned a random processor group rather than inheriting the parent's. For processes that don't require >64 cores, this means better utilization at the system level. However you're still assigned That's literally why 7-zip is announcing completion of that manual work.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#65

Post by arp242 »

Const-me wrote: post #28
zik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's surprisingly lame.

The NT kernel dates back to 1993. Computers didn’t exceed 64 logical processors per system until around 2014. And doing it back then required a ridiculously expensive server with 8 Intel CPUs. The technical decision Microsoft made initially worked well for over two decades. I don’t think it was lame; I believe it was a solid choice back then.

> Computers didn’t exceed 64 logical processors per system until around 2014.

Server systems were available with that since at least the late 90s. Server systems with >10 CPUs were already available in the mid-90s. By the early-to-mid 90s it was pretty obvious that was only going to increase and that the 64-CPU limit was going to be a problem down the line.

That said, development of NT started in 1988, and it may have been less obvious then.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#66

Post by pjmlp »

d33 wrote: post #10

I worry that 7-Zip is going to lose relevance because lack of zstd support. zlib's performance is intolerable for large files and zlib-ng's SIMD implementation only helps here a bit. Which is a shame, because 7-Zip is a pretty amazing container format, especially with its encryption and file splitting capabilities.

As long as it does a better job than whatever Windows team packs into the OS, they're safe.

Even on latest Windows 11 takes minutes to do what 7-Zip does in seconds.

Goes to show how good all those leetcode interviews turn out.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#67

Post by sidewndr46 »

dikei wrote: post #29
d33 wrote: post #10

I worry that 7-Zip is going to lose relevance because lack of zstd support. zlib's performance is intolerable for large files and zlib-ng's SIMD implementation only helps here a bit. Which is a shame, because 7-Zip is a pretty amazing container format, especially with its encryption and file splitting capabilities.

I use ZSTD a ton in my programming work where efficiency matters. But for sharing files with other people, ZIP is still king. Even 7z or RAR is niche. Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger.

What are you compressing with zstd? I had to do this recently and the "xz" utility still blows it away in terms of compression ratio. In terms of memory and CPU usage, zstd wins by a large margin. But in my case I only really cared about compression ratio

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#68

Post by immibis »

Const-me wrote: post #28
zik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's surprisingly lame.

The NT kernel dates back to 1993. Computers didn’t exceed 64 logical processors per system until around 2014. And doing it back then required a ridiculously expensive server with 8 Intel CPUs. The technical decision Microsoft made initially worked well for over two decades. I don’t think it was lame; I believe it was a solid choice back then.

Linux had many similar restrictions in its lifetime; it just has a different compatibility philosophy that allowed it to break all the relevant ABIs. Most recently, dual-socket 192-core Ampere systems were running into a hardcoded 256-processor limit. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/yes-you-can-...

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#69

Post by sidewndr46 »

cesarb wrote: post #37
dikei wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ZSTD a ton in my programming work where efficiency matters. But for sharing files with other people, ZIP is still king. Even 7z or RAR is niche. Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger.

> Everyone can open a ZIP file, and they don't really care if the file is a few MBs bigger. You can use ZSTD with ZIP files too! It's compression method 93 (see https://pkware.cachefly.net/webdocs/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT which is the official ZIP file specification). Which reveals that "everyone can open a ZIP file" is a lie. Sure, everyone can open a ZIP file, as long as that file uses only a limited subset of the Z…

Same thing with "WAV" files. There's at least 3 popular formats for the audio data out there.

Re: 7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression

#70

Post by sidewndr46 »

jorvi wrote: post #25
rf15 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that many people care about zstd; I would assume most 7-zip users care about the convenience of the gui.

.. but 7-zip has a pretty terrible GUI? Hence why PeaZip is so popular, and J-Zip used to be before it was stuffed with adware.

If you're expecting a "mobile first" or similar GUI where most of the screen is dedicated to whitespace, basic features involves 7 or more mouse clicks and for some reason it all gets changed every ~6 months then yes the 7zip GUI is terrible.

Desktop software usability peaked sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s. There's a reason why 7zip still looks like ~2004

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