Very nice introduction. Recently I've been following the progress of the Finite State Entropy algorithm[1]. From the readme on the github project [2]: >FSE is

Very nice introduction. Recently I've been following the progress of the Finite State Entropy algorithm[1]. From the readme on the github project [2]: >FSE is a new kind of Entropy encoder, based on ANS theory, from Jarek Duda. >It is designed to compete with Huffman encoder and Arithmetic ones. >While huffman is fast but can only represent probabilities in power of 2 (50%, 25%, etc.) arithmetic coding can represent probabilities with much better accuracy, but requires multiplications and divisions. > FSE solve this dilemma by providing precise probabilities, like arithmetic does, but using only additions, masks and shifts. > This makes FSE faster, on par with Huffman speed, and even suitable for low-power CPU environment. [1]: http://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2013/12/finite-state-entropy-new-breed-of.html http://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2013/12/finite-state-ent... [2]: https://github.com/Cyan4973/FiniteStateEntropy https://github.com/Cyan4973/FiniteStateEntropy