Editing Lossless compression (section)

== Benchmarks ==
Lossless compression algorithms and their implementations are routinely tested in head-to-head [[benchmark (computing)|benchmark]]s. There are a number of better-known compression benchmarks. Some benchmarks cover only the [[data compression ratio]], so winners in these benchmarks may be unsuitable for everyday use due to the slow speed of the top performers. Another drawback of some benchmarks is that their data files are known, so some program writers may optimize their programs for best performance on a particular data set. The winners on these benchmarks often come from the class of [[context-mixing]] compression software.

[[Matt Mahoney (computer scientist)|Matt Mahoney]], in his February 2010 edition of the free booklet ''Data Compression Explained'', additionally lists the following:<ref>{{cite web|title=Data Compression Explained|author=Matt Mahoney |year=2010|url=http://nishi.dreamhosters.com/u/dce2010-02-26.pdf|pages=3–5}}</ref>
* The [[Calgary Corpus]] dating back to 1987 is no longer widely used due to its small size.  Matt Mahoney maintained the Calgary Compression Challenge, created and maintained from May 21, 1996, through May 21, 2016, by Leonid A. Broukhis.
* The Large Text Compression Benchmark<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html|title=Large Text Compression Benchmark|website=mattmahoney.net}}</ref> and the similar [[Hutter Prize]] both use a trimmed [[Wikipedia]] [[XML]] [[UTF-8]] data set.
* The Generic Compression Benchmark,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mattmahoney.net/dc/uiq/|title=Generic Compression Benchmark|website=mattmahoney.net}}</ref> maintained by Matt Mahoney, tests compression of data generated by random [[Turing machine|Turing machines]].
* Sami Runsas (the author of NanoZip) maintained Compression Ratings, a benchmark similar to Maximum Compression multiple file test, but with minimum speed requirements. It offered the calculator that allowed the user to weight the importance of speed and compression ratio. The top programs were fairly different due to the speed requirement. In January 2010, the top program was NanoZip followed by [[FreeArc]], [[CCM (software)|CCM]], [[flashzip]], and [[7-Zip]].
* The Monster of Compression benchmark by Nania Francesco Antonio tested compression on 1Gb of public data with a 40-minute time limit. In December 2009, the top ranked archiver was NanoZip 0.07a and the top ranked single file compressor was [[ccmx]] 1.30c.

The Compression Ratings website published a chart summary of the "frontier" in compression ratio and time.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://compressionratings.com/rating_sum.html|title=Summary|date=September 1, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160901094802/http://compressionratings.com/rating_sum.html |archive-date=September 1, 2016 }}</ref>

The Compression Analysis Tool<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.noemax.com/free-tools/compression-analysis-tool.asp |title=Compression Analysis Tool |publisher=Noemax Technologies |website=Free Tools}}</ref> is a Windows application that enables end users to benchmark the performance characteristics of streaming implementations of LZF4, Deflate, ZLIB, GZIP, BZIP2 and LZMA using their own data. It produces measurements and charts with which users can compare the compression speed, decompression speed and compression ratio of the different compression methods and to examine how the compression level, buffer size and flushing operations affect the results.