7-Zip 20.02 Alpha [Update]

7-Zip is a open source file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, Z. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. Check license information here: 7-Zip license.

You can use 7-Zip on any computer, including a computer in a commercial organization. You don"t need to register or pay for 7-Zip.

The main features of 7-Zip are:

  • High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA compression
  • Compression ratio for ZIP and GZIP formats: 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
  • Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
  • Self-extracting capability for 7z format
  • Integration with Windows Shell
  • Powerful File Manager
  • Powerful command line version
  • Plugin for FAR Manager
  • Localizations for 74 languages

What"s new after 7-Zip 20.00 alpha:

  • The default number of LZMA2 chunks per solid block in 7z archive was increased to 64. It allows to increase the compression speed for big 7z archives, if there is a big number of CPU cores and threads.
  • The speed of PPMd compressing/decompressing was increased for 7z/ZIP/RAR archives.
  • The new -ssp switch. If the switch -ssp is specified, 7-Zip doesn"t allow the system to modify "Last Access Time" property of source files for archiving and hashing operations.
  • Some bugs were fixed.
  • New localization: Swahili.

What"s new after 7-Zip 19.00:

  • 7-Zip now supports new optional match finders for LZMA/LZMA2 compression: bt5 and hc5, that can work faster than bt4 and hc4 match finders for the data with big redundancy.
  • The compression ratio was improved for Fast and Fastest compression levels with the following default settings:
  • Fastest level (-mx1) : hc5 match finder with 256 KB dictionary.
  • Fast level (-mx3) : hc5 match finder with 4 MB dictionary.
  • Minor speed optimizations in multithreaded LZMA/LZMA2 compression for Normal/Maximum/Ultra compression levels.
  • bzip2 decoding code was updated to support bzip2 archives, created by lbzip2 program.
  • New localization: Turkmen.
  • 7-Zip now can unpack files encoded with Base64 encoding (b64 filename extension).
  • 7-Zip now can use new x86/x64 hardware instructions for SHA-1 and SHA-256, supported
  • by AMD Ryzen and latest Intel CPUs: Ice Lake and Goldmont.

It increases

  • the speed of SHA-1/SHA-256 hash value calculation,
  • the speed of encryption/decryption in zip AES,
  • the speed of key derivation for encryption/decryption in 7z/zip/rar archives.

The speed of zip AES encryption and 7z/zip/rar AES decryption was increased with
the following improvements:

  • 7-Zip now can use new x86/x64 VAES (AVX Vector AES) instructions, supported by Intel Ice Lake CPU.
  • The existing code of x86/x64 AES-NI was improved also.
  • There is 2% speed optimization in 7-Zip benchmark"s decompression.

Changes in v20.02 Alpha:

  • The default number of LZMA2 chunks per solid block in 7z archive was increased to 64. It allows to increase the compression speed for big 7z archives, if there is a big number of CPU cores and threads. The speed of PPMd compressing/decompressing was increased for 7z/ZIP/RAR archives.
  • The new -ssp switch. If the switch -ssp is specified, 7-Zip doesn"t allow the system to modify "Last Access Time" property of source files for archiving and hashing operations.
  • Some bugs were fixed.
  • New localization: Swahili.

Download: 7-Zip 20.02 (32-bit) | 1.1 MB (Open Source)
Download: 7-Zip 20.02 (64-bit) | 1.4 MB
View: 7-Zip Website | Release Announcement

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