PNG is slow because of deflate, not libpng — zlib-ng's SIMD wins
ssh4net · x · 2026-10-24
This thread explains the real bottleneck behind slow PNG decoding: zlib-ng is heavily SIMD-optimized while stock zlib is a legacy library, and deflate compression/decompression is what makes PNG slow. There's nothing faster than this SIMD deflate — nvcomp can decode/encode some deflate modes slightly faster, but overall SIMD deflate outperforms GPU by a lot. Wuffs likely uses the same SIMD optimizations, with more complexity than a standard PNG library.
More from Infra
- antirez makes the case for local AI as hacker's Samsung TV snooping saga hits HN — antirez · 2026-10-24
- Micron roadmap: HBM4 at 2.8 TB/s per stack, vertical HBM on GPUs by 2028 — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-24
- Hunyuan 3D 2.1 nearly unusable on Mac: errors above 512 resolution — idmimagineering · 2026-10-24
- GPU programming day 293: diving into SGLang via mini-sglang and MIT's EfficientML lecture 12 — NandoDF · 2026-10-24
- China's Jiuzhang 4.0 claims 10^42-year speedup in 25 microseconds — but the task has no practical use — AryHHAry · 2026-10-24
- Fancy coding-agent harnesses cost 3x more but don't improve pass rates, study finds — The Decoder · 2026-10-24