A parallel implementation of gzip that utilizes multiple CPU cores for compression and decompression, achieving faster speeds on multi-core systems
pigz is a parallel implementation of the popular gzip compression utility. It operates in a similar manner to gzip but is able to split the compression or decompression tasks across multiple CPU cores and threads.
This parallelization allows pigz to achieve much higher compression and decompression speeds than regular gzip when run on modern multi-core processors. Tests show pigz can be multiple times faster than gzip depending on the number of CPU cores available.
pigz supports all the same compression formats and levels as gzip. It produces archives that are compatible with gzip and gunzip. The command line options are similar though not identical to gzip making it easy to integrate into existing scripts.
In summary, pigz provides a drop-in parallel implementation of gzip that can fully utilize modern multi-core CPUs to speed up compression and decompression of gzip files with no compatibility issues.
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