Can we reduce bzip2 block size lower than 100KB?

Question

Currently bzip2 uses the smallest block size for compression and decompression of 100KB (parameter -1). Can we reduce the block size easily in bzip, without deteriorating the performance much?

Is there any other implementation of bzip2 which does the same?

Answer 1

In this case I'd use the parallel version of bzip2 . It's compatible with the original bzip2 and it really does speed things up tremendously.

http://compression.ca/pbzip2/

You can then change the block size and you performance is still likely to beat the non parallel bzip2 .