The linker creates a separate input section to hold the compressed data. Consider the following table() operation in the linker command file.

SECTIONS
{
    .task1: load = ROM, run = RAM, table(_task1_table)
}

The output object file has one output section named .task1 which has different load and run addresses. This is possible because the load space and run space have identical data when the section is not compressed.

Alternatively, consider the following:

SECTIONS
{
    .task1: load = ROM, run = RAM, table(_task1_table, compression=rle)
}

If the linker compresses the .task1 section then the load space data and the run space data are different. The linker creates the following two sections:

• .task1 : This section is uninitialized. This output section represents the run space image of section task1.
• .task1.load : This section is initialized. This output section represents the load space image of the section task1. This section usually is considerably smaller in size than .task1 output section.

The linker allocates load space for the .task1.load input section in the memory area that was specified for load placement for the .task1 section. There is only a single load section to represent the load placement of .task1 - .task1.load. If the .task1 data had not been compressed, there would be two allocations for the .task1 input section: one for its load placement and another for its run placement.