Since Firefox 151 (released May 2025), Mozilla has been using zlib-rs, a Rust-based drop-in replacement for the C zlib library, for Gzip compression/decompression. The Trifecta Tech Foundation details the two-year journey to production, including challenges with algorithm changes at different compression levels and Intel 13th/14th Gen CPU stability issues that required adding a small amount of unsafe Rust code. The end result delivers improved memory safety and significantly better performance on x86_64, with smaller gains on AArch64.
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