News and New Products

Compression technique preserves accessible data elements

By Maury Wright, Editor at Large -- EDN, 6/13/2005

Like all other compression technologies, WindSpring’s DMT (data-miniaturization technology) shrinks data sets, thereby reducing storage requirements and the accessing or transmitting time necessary to fetch data. But DMT differs from most other lossless-compression techniques in that the data elements that comprise a compressed file maintain a one-to-one relationship with the data elements in the original file. This approach means that an application such as a mapping program can manipulate elements within a compressed map without decompressing the entire file and therefore without the requirements of a memory bank that can handle the decompressed file.

WindSpring’s technology does not work on all data types. You can’t use it to compress MP3 music or JPEG image files, for instance. But for files ranging from text documents to maps, DMT may prove a perfect match for PDAs, automobile systems, and other memory- and storage-constrained applications.

You apply the DMT codec to a data file, resulting in the creation of a sequence dictionary and the new file in a MDF (micro-data format). The company claims that you will realize typical compression ratios of 3-to-1 on text files, 6-to-1 on XML files, and as much as 10-to-1 on map files.

The company will market the technique in two ways. WindSpring Gazelle targets OEM-device manufacturers and application developers and sells for $25,000 plus royalties. The product supports the Windows, Linux, Qualcomm Brew, and PocketPC operating systems. End users, meanwhile, can buy WindSpring Mobile for the PocketPC for $24.95.

WindSpring Inc, www.windspring.com.