NVIDIA / NVIDIA/CUDALibrarySamples

[QST] Is it possible to perform decompression on solely the CPU with Snappy?

Open
#330 2 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@naveenaero is already working on this.

Since Apr 29, 2026.

nvCOMP question
Dominant language
Cuda
Stars
2.5k
Forks
478
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Hello everyone, I'm trying to use this library to minimize the amount of data that has to travel between the CPU and GPU-- however I have not been able to find if it is possible to use Snappy on the CPU only?

In my limited testing it doesn't appear as though the GPU-compressed Snappy stream is bitstream-compatible with other implementations of Snappy in other languages, only Nvcomp can decompress the bitstream back. (This may of course be due to a different version of the library used, so if there is a known working version please do let me know!)

Utilizing the GPU again for decompression would defeat the whole purpose in this case, so I was wondering if there was any way to decompress a stream made on the GPU on the CPU?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.