2 posts tagged “zarr”
My data-loader fix just won a $1,000 Vesuvius Challenge Progress Prize
The Vesuvius Challenge's July 2026 Progress Prizes named my Zarr 3 compatibility fix and chunk cache for the Python vesuvius library. Here's what was actually awarded, and why the boring data-plumbing work was worth writing up.
The same Herculaneum scroll query can fetch 1.3× — or 176× too much data
There is no single best zarr chunk size for reading the Herculaneum scrolls. On one region of Scroll 1, re-chunked five ways and read three ways, read amplification ranged from 1.3× to 176× — same bytes, only the chunk geometry and access pattern changed. I measured it on a laptop, and put the missing chunk cache back on the Python reader while I was there.