FRAME BUFFER COMPRESSION USING SEPARATE AGGREGATION OF FIXED-LENGTH AND VARIABLE-LENGTH COMPONENTS OF CODEWORDS

Each set of pels of an image frame is encoded into a corresponding set of codewords having fixed-length and unary variable-length components. The variable-length components are combined into a variable-length portion and the fixed-length components are separately combined into a fixed-length portion that is attached to the variable-length portion to complete a bit segment. For decompression, a first bit string of a fixed number of bits is identified as a fixed-length portion of the bit segment. A search window placed adjacent to the first bit string is scanned to find a second bit string having a number of termination bits equal to the number of codewords in the set, with the second bit string thus representing the variable-length portion of a corresponding bit segment. Each variable-length component of the identified variable-length portion is combined with a corresponding fixed-length component of the identified fixed-length portion to recreate a corresponding codeword.