Hello I looked at the SVG graphs and it appears that the formula used wasn't T_load+T_decompress, but was just T_decompress. Without considering the time it takes to load the compressed data from a storage device, the SVG graphs are only half-done and might be deceiving. There are 3 kinds of typical device speeds nowadays, the sequential read speed of a large non-fragmented compressed file is one of the following: 100 MB/s: rotational disks and USB flash drives 500 MB/s: SATA SSD 2 GB/s: NVMe SSD The read speeds of USB flash devices vary a lot, but in case of recent high-speed USB flash drives it falls into the 100 MB/s category of rotational disks. Taking USB flash read speed into consideration is important for deciding which compression to use when creating the ISO image of a Linux distribution. In summary: Instead of the 1 kernel-decomp.svg file, there should be 3 kernel-read-decomp.svg files. Similarly in the case of the initramfs-decomp.svg file. As a rule of thumb, if the kernel and initramfs are stored on a NVMe SSD then simply select the fastest decompressor without considering the compression ratio - or avoid using any compression at all in which case T_decompress will be zero. The formula T_load+T_decompress assumes that loading and decompression aren't executing in parallel. If they are, the formula should be max(T_load, T_decompress). Sincerely Jan
