These Engineers simply constructed their own “Pied Piper” Compression Algorithm

you could be forgiven for pondering that the elevator pitch for Daniel Reiter Horn’s newest project sounds familiar. which is as a result of there’s a good chance you noticed it on HBO. in fact, everything about the project, right right down to its title, was once ripped right from the network’s hit comedy Silicon Valley. And that used to be exactly the purpose.

Horn’s “Pied Piper” is precisely what lovers of the tv show would expect, given its identify: it is a media file compression schema designed to compress and decompress recordsdata without compromising their quality. Over the course of a few week, Horn and his staff have managed to succeed in a 22% discount in file dimension for JPEG pictures with none amazing loss in image high quality. next, they’re shifting onto video files. consume your coronary heart out, Richard Hendricks.

“The goal for this product is to prove that we will reach lossless compression for JPEG photography and H.264 videos,” explains Horn. “If a hit, we will use this expertise to save lots of better recordsdata in even less space.”

Pied Piper came out of a “Hack Week” held at Dropbox, the place Horn works as an infrastructure engineer. Pied Piper is considered one of dozens of tasks being worked on throughout the weeklong event, where staffers are inspired to dream up and construct merchandise and contours outdoor of the normal scope of the company’s mission. In complete, 10 Dropbox staff are working on the Pied Piper algorithm.

So what’s the problem being solved right here? As Horn factors out, there are still some outdated inefficiencies in the best way some files are compressed. “for instance, virtually all JPEG files today are Huffman coded, but it’s well-known that making use of an additional arithmetic coder to existing JPEG recordsdata brings an additional 10% discount in file dimension at no cost to the file,” he says. “Our Pied Piper algorithm goals to move even additional with a extra efficient encoding algorithm that maps completely back to current formats.”

while it can be indisputably a enjoyable test to undertake all through an organization’s hack week, Pied Piper might wind being slightly more vital than that: Its potential to compress file sizes might in truth have tangible, real-world advantages for Dropbox, whose core industry is storing recordsdata within the cloud.

“I view it as constructing a greener Dropbox,” Horn says. “using fewer laborious drives to save area manner mining fewer minerals to build those arduous drives and burning less power to run their helping equipment.”

The team has also open-sourced the code on GitHub, permitting others to make the most of their work.

while Horn and his colleagues may not make it to the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt with this one, they can leisure simple understanding that their algorithm can lend a hand shop precious onerous pressure space. And who knows—it might be even assist make the sector a better position.