buzhash64: add FastCDC-style normalized chunking#9823
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Normalized chunking switches between a stricter and a looser cut mask around the target chunk size. This greatly tightens the chunk-size distribution (coefficient of variation ~0.9 -> ~0.3 in tests) and removes the dedup-hostile max-size-clamped chunks, with unchanged deduplication. chunker-params for buzhash64 gains a required 6th field, nc_level: buzhash64,chunk_min,chunk_max,chunk_mask,window_size,nc_level Use nc_level=2 for the new default, nc_level=0 to disable (then behavior is byte-identical to the previous single-mask chunker). buzhash (32bit) is untouched and stays bit-compatible with borg 1.x. The mask transition point (normal_size) defaults to a principled formula (target minus the expected loose-phase tail) so the mean stays near the target; it can be tuned via the normal_size constructor arg. scripts/chunker_bench.py: evidence harness used to measure chunk-size distribution, dedup ratio, throughput and shift-resilience. Measurements (before = nc_level 0, after = nc_level 2; both at the default params buzhash64,19,23,21,4095; measured with scripts/chunker_bench.py): 5 GiB of incompressible data (~2000-2700 chunks, statistically stable): before: CV 0.739, 49 max-size-clamped (8 MiB) chunks, 953 MB/s after: CV 0.311, 0 max-size-clamped chunks, 1024 MB/s Re-backup of a 2.5 GiB file after a few scattered single-byte edits (deduplication ratio; 0.5 = v2 fully deduplicated against v1, lower is better): 64 edits: before 0.5424 -> after 0.5235 320 edits: before 0.6791 -> after 0.6142 Normalized chunking deduplicates better after edits: removing the max-size-clamped chunks means a single-byte change invalidates much less data (about 36% less dedup overhead at 320 edits). Throughput was also consistently higher with nc_level=2 at this scale. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Codecov Report❌ Patch coverage is
Additional details and impacted files@@ Coverage Diff @@
## master #9823 +/- ##
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+ Coverage 84.94% 84.98% +0.03%
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Files 92 92
Lines 15291 15295 +4
Branches 2296 2297 +1
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+ Hits 12989 12998 +9
+ Misses 1611 1604 -7
- Partials 691 693 +2 ☔ View full report in Codecov by Harness. |
This was referenced Jun 27, 2026
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Normalized chunking switches between a stricter and a looser cut mask around the target chunk size. This greatly tightens the chunk-size distribution (coefficient of variation ~0.9 -> ~0.3 in tests) and removes the dedup-hostile max-size-clamped chunks, with unchanged deduplication.
chunker-params for buzhash64 gains a required 6th field, nc_level:
buzhash64,chunk_min,chunk_max,chunk_mask,window_size,nc_level
Use nc_level=2 for the new default, nc_level=0 to disable (then behavior is byte-identical to the previous single-mask chunker).
buzhash (32bit) is untouched and stays bit-compatible with borg 1.x.
The mask transition point (normal_size) defaults to a principled formula (target minus the expected loose-phase tail) so the mean stays near the target; it can be tuned via the normal_size constructor arg.
scripts/chunker_bench.py: evidence harness used to measure chunk-size distribution, dedup ratio, throughput and shift-resilience.
Measurements (before = nc_level 0, after = nc_level 2; both at the default params buzhash64,19,23,21,4095; measured with scripts/chunker_bench.py):
5 GiB of incompressible data (~2000-2700 chunks, statistically stable):
before: CV 0.739, 49 max-size-clamped (8 MiB) chunks, 953 MB/s
after: CV 0.311, 0 max-size-clamped chunks, 1024 MB/s
Re-backup of a 2.5 GiB file after a few scattered single-byte edits (deduplication ratio; 0.5 = v2 fully deduplicated against v1, lower is better):
64 edits: before 0.5424 -> after 0.5235
320 edits: before 0.6791 -> after 0.6142
Normalized chunking deduplicates better after edits: removing the max-size-clamped chunks means a single-byte change invalidates much less data (about 36% less dedup overhead at 320 edits). Throughput was also consistently higher with nc_level=2 at this scale.