slimarray

SlimArray is a space efficient, static uint32 array. It uses polynomial to compress and store an array. With a SlimArray with a million sorted number in range [0, 1000*1000],

• a uint32 requires only 5 bits (17% of original data);
• compressing a uint32 takes 110 ns, e.g., 9 million insert per second;
• reading a uint32 with Get() takes 7 ns.
• batch reading with Slice() takes 3.8 ns/elt.

SlimBytes is an array of var-length records(a record is a []byte), which is indexed by SlimArray. Thus the memory overhead of storing offset and length of each record is very low, e.g., about 8 bits/record, compared to a typical implementation that uses an offset of type int(32 to 64 bit / record). An Get() takes 15 ns.

中文介绍: https://blog.openacid.com/algo/slimarray/

• Why
• What It Is And What It Is Not
• Limitation
• Install
• Synopsis
  • Build a SlimArray
  • Build a SlimBytes
• How it works
  • The General Idea
  • What It Is And What It Is Not
  • Data Structure
  • Uncompressed Data Structures
  • Compact

Why

• Space efficient: In a sorted array, an elt only takes about 10 bits to store a 32-bit int.

• Fast: Get(): 7 ns/op. Building: 110 ns/elt. Run and see the benchmark: go test . -bench=..

• Adaptive: It does not require the data to be totally sorted to compress it. E.g., SlimArray is perfect to store online user histogram data.

• Ready for transport: slimarray is protobuf defined, and has the same structure in memory as on disk. No cost to load or dump.

What It Is And What It Is Not

Another space efficient data structure to store uint32 array is trie(Aka prefix tree or radix tree). It is possible to use bitmap-based btree like structure to reduce space(very likely in such case it provides higher compression rate). But it requires the array to be sorted.

SlimArray does not have such restriction. It is more adaptive with data layout. To achieve high compression rate, it only requires the data has a overall trend, e.g., roughly sorted.

Additionally, it also accept duplicated element in the array, which a bitmap based or tree-like data structure does not allow.

In the ipv4-list example, we feed 450,000 ipv4 to SlimArray. We see that SlimArray costs as small as gzip-ed data(2.1 MB vs 2.0 MB), while it provides instance access to the data without decompressing it. And in the slimstar example, SlimArray memory usage vs gzip-ed data is 832 bytes vs 602 bytes.

Limitation

• Static: slimarray is a static data structure that can not be modified after creation. Thus slimarray is ideal for a time-series-database, i.e., data set is huge but never change.

• 32 bits: currently slimarray supports only one element type uint32.

Install

go get github.com/openacid/slimarray

Synopsis

Build a SlimArray

package slimarray_test

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/openacid/slimarray"
)

func ExampleSlimArray() {

	nums := []uint32{
		0, 16, 32, 48, 64, 79, 95, 111, 126, 142, 158, 174, 190, 206, 222, 236,
		252, 268, 275, 278, 281, 283, 285, 289, 296, 301, 304, 307, 311, 313, 318,
		321, 325, 328, 335, 339, 344, 348, 353, 357, 360, 364, 369, 372, 377, 383,
		387, 393, 399, 404, 407, 410, 415, 418, 420, 422, 426, 430, 434, 439, 444,
		446, 448, 451, 456, 459, 462, 465, 470, 473, 479, 482, 488, 490, 494, 500,
		506, 509, 513, 519, 521, 528, 530, 534, 537, 540, 544, 546, 551, 556, 560,
		566, 568, 572, 574, 576, 580, 585, 588, 592, 594, 600, 603, 606, 608, 610,
		614, 620, 623, 628, 630, 632, 638, 644, 647, 653, 658, 660, 662, 665, 670,
		672, 676, 681, 683, 687, 689, 691, 693, 695, 697, 703, 706, 710, 715, 719,
		722, 726, 731, 735, 737, 741, 748, 750, 753, 757, 763, 766, 768, 775, 777,
		782, 785, 791, 795, 798, 800, 806, 811, 815, 818, 821, 824, 829, 832, 836,
		838, 842, 846, 850, 855, 860, 865, 870, 875, 878, 882, 886, 890, 895, 900,
		906, 910, 913, 916, 921, 925, 929, 932, 937, 940, 942, 944, 946, 952, 954,
		956, 958, 962, 966, 968, 971, 975, 979, 983, 987, 989, 994, 997, 1000,
	}

	a := slimarray.NewU32(nums)

	fmt.Println("last elt is:", a.Get(int32(a.Len()-1)))

	st := a.Stat()
	for _, k := range []string{
		"elt_width",
		"mem_elts",
		"bits/elt"} {
		fmt.Printf("%10s : %d\n", k, st[k])
	}

	// Unordered output:
	// last elt is: 1000
	//  elt_width : 3
	//   mem_elts : 112
	//   bits/elt : 16
}

Build a SlimBytes

package slimarray_test

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/openacid/slimarray"
)

func ExampleSlimBytes() {

	records := [][]byte{
		[]byte("SlimBytes"),
		[]byte("is"),
		[]byte("an"),
		[]byte("array"),
		[]byte("of"),
		[]byte("var-length"),
		[]byte("records(a"),
		[]byte("record"),
		[]byte("is"),
		[]byte("a"),
		[]byte("[]byte"),
		[]byte("which"),
		[]byte("is"),
		[]byte("indexed"),
		[]byte("by"),
		[]byte("SlimArray"),
	}

	a, err := slimarray.NewBytes(records)
	_ = err

	for i := 0; i < 16; i++ {
		fmt.Print(string(a.Get(int32(i))), " ")
	}
	fmt.Println()

	// Output:
	// SlimBytes is an array of var-length records(a record is a []byte which is indexed by SlimArray
}

How it works

Package slimarray uses polynomial to compress and store an array of uint32. A uint32 costs only 5 bits in a sorted array of a million number in range [0, 1000*1000].

The General Idea

We use a polynomial y = a + bx + cx² to describe the overall trend of the numbers. And for every number i we add a residual to fit the gap between y(i) and nums[i]. E.g. If there are 4 numbers: 0, 15, 33, 50 The polynomial and residuals are:

y = 16x
0, -1, 1, 2

In this case the residuals require 3 bits for each of them. To retrieve the numbers, we evaluate y(i) and add the residual to it:

get(0) = y(0) + 0 = 16 * 0 + 0 = 0
get(1) = y(1) - 1 = 16 * 1 - 1 = 15
get(2) = y(2) + 1 = 16 * 2 + 1 = 33
get(3) = y(3) + 2 = 16 * 3 + 2 = 50

What It Is And What It Is Not

Another space efficient data structure to store uint32 array is trie or prefix tree or radix tree. It is possible to use bitmap-based btree like structure to reduce space(very likely in such case it provides higher compression rate). But it requires the array to be sorted.

SlimArray does not have such restriction. It is more adaptive with data layout. To achieve high compression rate, it only requires the data has a overall trend, e.g., roughly sorted, as seen in the above 4 integers examples. Additionally, it also accept duplicated element in the array, which a bitmap based or tree-like data structure does not allow.

Data Structure

SlimArray splits the entire array into segments(Seg), each of which has 1024 numbers. And then it splits every segment into several spans. Every span has its own polynomial. A span has 16*k numbers. A segment has at most 64 spans.

        seg[0]                      seg[1]
        1024 nums                   1024 nums
|-------+---------------+---|---------------------------|...
 span[0]    span[1]
 16 nums    32 nums      ..

Uncompressed Data Structures

A SlimArray is a compacted data structure. The original data structures are defined as follow(assumes original user data is nums []uint32):

Seg struct {
  SpansBitmap   uint64      // describe span layout
  Rank         uint64      // count `1` in preceding Seg.
  Spans       []Span
}

Span struct {
  width         int32       // is retrieved from SpansBitmap

  Polynomial [3]double      //
  Config struct {           //
    Offset        int32     // residual offset
    ResidualWidth int32     // number of bits a residual requires
  }
  Residuals  [width][ResidualWidth]bit // pack into SlimArray.Residuals
}

A span stores 16*k int32 in it, where k ∈ [1, 64).

Seg.SpansBitmap describes the layout of Span-s in a Seg. The i-th "1" indicates where the last 16 numbers are in the i-th Span. e.g.:

001011110000......
<-- least significant bit

In the above example:

span[0] has 16*3 nums in it.
span[1] has 16*2 nums in it.
span[2] has 16*1 nums in it.

Seg.Rank caches the total count of "1" in all preceding Seg.SpansBitmap. This accelerate locating a Span in the packed field SlimArray.Polynomials .

Span.width is the count of numbers stored in this span. It does not need to be stored because it can be calculated by counting the "0" between two "1" in Seg.SpansBitmap.

Span.Polynomial stores 3 coefficients of the polynomial describing the overall trend of this span. I.e. the [a, b, c] in y = a + bx + cx²

Span.Config.Offset adjust the offset to locate a residual. In a span we want to have that:

residual position = Config.Offset + (i%1024) * Config.ResidualWidth

But if the preceding span has smaller residual width, the "offset" could be negative, e.g.: span[0] has residual of width 0 and 16 residuals, span[1] has residual of width 4. Then the "offset" of span[1] is -16*4 in order to satisfy: (-16*4) + i * 4 is the correct residual position, for i in [16, 32).

Span.Config.ResidualWidth specifies the number of bits to store every residual in this span, it must be a power of 2: 2^k.

Span.Residuals is an array of residuals of length Span.width. Every elt in it is a ResidualWidth-bits integers.

Compact

SlimArray compact Seg into a dense format:

SlimArray.Bitmap = [
  Seg[0].SpansBitmap,
  Seg[1].SpansBitmap,
  ... ]

SlimArray.Polynomials = [
  Seg[0].Spans[0].Polynomials,
  Seg[0].Spans[1].Polynomials,
  ...
  Seg[1].Spans[0].Polynomials,
  Seg[1].Spans[1].Polynomials,
  ...
]

SlimArray.Configs = [
  Seg[0].Spans[0].Config
  Seg[0].Spans[1].Config
  ...
  Seg[1].Spans[0].Config
  Seg[1].Spans[1].Config
  ...
]

SlimArray.Residuals simply packs the residuals of every nums[i] together.