The compression ratio for a game is not a single fixed value and the minimum transfer speed required is determined by the lowest compression value achieved.
So your example of using a universal compression value of 1.6 is irrelevant and silly.
Good day sir.
Yes, he didn't have to state that it's an average value because it can be assumed that it's an average value. Anyone that pays even the slightest attention to compression ratios knows that it's generally accepted that they are stated in one of two ways.
- Compression ratio of X number = average compression ratio.
- Compression up to X number = maximum attainable compression ratio.
Minimum ratio is almost never stated as it's a meaningless number. The minimum compression ratio for virtually all compression algorithms is 0 because there can be data that is uncompressable. You do occasionally see a statement that might state that for X file type you will generally see a minimum compression ratio of Y. Even then there's a "generally" caveat as while they haven't seen lower in testing, they can't definitively know whether or not a file of type X won't result in a lower compression ratio than Y.
If you really did understand compression and how it interacts with other systems you would know this. As well it's a bandwidth multiplier assuming that the data doesn't require a significant amount of time to decompress. Again this is common knowledge and there's really no need to present evidence.
Random examples.
- 1 second to transmit 1 TB of data. Baseline.
- 0.5 seconds to transmit 0.5 TB of data. Data contains 1 TB of data compressed with a 2:1 ratio that takes 1 second to decompress. Worse effective bandwidth than no compression.
- 0.5 seconds to transmit 0.5 TB of data. Data contains 1 TB of data compressed with a 2:1 ratio that takes 0.5 seconds to decompress. No benefit WRT bandwidth.
- 0.5 seconds to transmit 0.5 TB of data. Data contains 1 TB of data compressed with a 2:1 ratio that takes 0.1 seconds to decompress. Effective bandwidth increased.
Take, for example, video streaming. Various forms of compression are the only reason that high resolution Video can be viewed in real time over a 10 Mbps connection. Without compression there would not be enough bandwidth.
Or getting into something less known to the common layperson, the whole reason that Internet that you use can provide you with modern bandwidth speed is because of ... yup, data compression. The telecommunication industry uses advanced compression and decompression hardware to be able to sustain high bandwidth data transmission. Without it the data would be too large to attain modern bandwidth speeds.
In most modern day applications requiring high bandwidth (Wifi, ethernet, Internet trunks, etc.) finding more efficient ways to compress and/or decompress data (either algorithmically or via better hardware for compression/decompression) with higher compression ratios is one of the pillars to end consumers seeing increased bandwidth in their devices. It isn't the
only one before someone wants to be pendantic, but it is a major one.
Everyone should, however, also keep in mind that while this applies to SSDs, it also applies to RAM or any other place where data can be stored.
Regards,
SB
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