US Patent 10133551 Content-aware compression of data using multiple parallel prediction functions

Multiple parallel prediction functions are employed for content-aware data compression. An exemplary method comprises obtaining a floating point number comprising a sign, an exponent at a given base and a significand having a length; applying a plurality of distinct prediction algorithms to the floating point number to generate a corresponding plurality of predictions; selecting a given one of the plurality of distinct prediction algorithms for the floating point number by evaluating a compression metric applied to the plurality of predictions; and encoding the floating point number by encoding the exponent and the length as a single code using a residual generated by the selected prediction algorithm. A disambiguation index optionally identifies the selected prediction algorithm among a set of prediction algorithms that potentially generated the selected prediction. A set of one or more predictors out of a larger set of predictors can be determined for a specific data set based on a performance-based ranking.