[HN Gopher] Superpack: Pushing the limits of compression in Face...
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       Superpack: Pushing the limits of compression in Facebook's mobile
       apps
        
       Author : detaro
       Score  : 79 points
       Date   : 2021-09-14 11:48 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (engineering.fb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (engineering.fb.com)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | warning26 wrote:
       | The fact that Facebook, something that really shouldn't even need
       | an app, requires this kind of compression seems like more of an
       | unintentional commentary on how bloated their terrible app is
       | than anything else.
        
         | Kayou wrote:
         | Yeah, and I think it really shows that WhatsApp, which wasn't
         | developped by Facebook originally, doesn't benefits from the
         | compression. The app seems very optimized originally, but maybe
         | I'm wrong.
        
           | dirkf wrote:
           | Also see the stark contrast with their Facebook Lite app.
           | Makes you wonder what difference all those megabytes in the
           | full app actually make...
        
             | jamil7 wrote:
             | Append-only development
        
         | umanwizard wrote:
         | Yep, this 100%. I worked on Facebook iOS app
         | perf/reliability/efficiency for a couple of years. The company
         | is structurally and politically incapable of making a lean app
         | (thousands of engineers have their performance reviews tied to
         | launching new features, not deleting old ones). So they rely on
         | a relatively small number of engineers making heroic technical
         | fixes in order to make it possible for the app to even boot.
         | Similar situation on Android.
         | 
         | The status quo is clearly dysfunctional but I would be
         | surprised if the company ever figures out how to fix it.
        
         | burnte wrote:
         | I don't even have the app on my phone, just a shortcut to the
         | mobile site, and it does everything I need.
        
       | pella wrote:
       | important: "We may someday consider open sourcing Superpack."
        
         | mshockwave wrote:
         | I hope they'll push out a paper as well
        
       | alimbada wrote:
       | Now if Google could do some optimisation of their apps on the
       | Apple App Store, that'd be great. Currently, the latest Gmail
       | update sits at ~328MB, the total of all nine Google apps on my
       | phone sits at 2226MB (averaging ~247MB). It's ridiculous.
        
       | lifthrasiir wrote:
       | So basically the compressor is aware of opcode structure so uses
       | multiple data streams and contextual encoding for operands. The
       | article doesn't say much about the use of SMT solver, but my
       | guess is that it transforms opcodes in a way that they run
       | exactly identically as the original (verified by the solver) but
       | compress better. Well-known stuffs in the data compression
       | community, but also hard to execute efficiently.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-14 23:03 UTC)