The 1 bit = 6 dB Rule of Thumb, Revisited.

Almost ten years ago I wrote an entry about the “1 bit = 6 dB” rule of thumb. This rule states that for each bit you add to a signal, you add 6 dB of signal to noise ratio.

The first derivation I gave then was focused on the noise, where the noise maximal amplitude was proportional to the amplitude represented by the last bit of the (encoded) signal. Let’s now derive it from the most significant bit of the signal to its least significant.

New Block Order

The idea of reorganizing data before compression isn’t new. Almost twenty five years ago, Burrows and Wheeler proposed a block sorting transform to reorder data to help compression. The idea here is to try to create repetitions that can be exploited by a second compression engine.

But the Burrows-Wheeler transform isn’t the only possible one. There are a few other techniques to generate (reversible) permutations of the input.

r4nd0m pa$$w0rd

Let’s take it easy this week. What about we generate random passwords? That should be fun, right?

Much Ado About Nothing

A rather long time ago, I wrote a blog entry on branchless equivalents of simple functions such as sex, abs, min, max. The Sing EXtension instruction propagates the sign bit in the upper bits, and is typically used in the promotion of, say, a 16 bits signed value into a 32 bits variable.

But this time, I needed something a bit different: I only wanted the sign-extended part. Could I do much better than last time? Turns out, the compiler has a mind of its own.