Zstd previously introduced the "--long" mode to analyze large quantities of data in a timely manner and suitable memory budget. The aim in this mode is to improve the compression ratio for files with long matches at a large distance. With Zstd 1.4.9 the long distance mode is much faster thanks to a number of optimizations that preserve the compression ratio while drastically speeding up the compression time. Test cases are showing this long distance mode being 114~154% faster than the prior point release of Zstd. These new algorithms for the long distance mode appear to be a big win based on all of the data published thus far.
The faster long distance mode is the main highlight of Zstd 1.4.9 but there is also a new experimental decompression feature allowing multiple calls to the Zstd refDDict, improved help message, and other changes.
Downloads and more details on Zstd 1.4.9 via GitHub . Our Zstd compression benchmark test profile is in the process of being updated against this latest release.