It's actually amazing that Neuralink can use this badly distorted data.
I imagine that fixing the A/D would improve their results dramatically -- lower latency and higher precision.
Why Neuralink has continued work with such an obvious hardware defect is a serious question. Do they actually analyze the A/D to make sure its working properly?
Analyzing the data it becomes clear that the A/D used by Neuralink is defective, i.e. very poor accuracy. The A/D introduces a huge amount of distortion, which in practice manifests as noise.
Until this A/D linearity problem is fixed, there is no point pursuing compression schemes. The data is so badly mangled it makes it pretty near impossible to find patterns.
Neuralink should skip the compression, and replace the radio link with optics. A tiny embedded LED can transmit data optically at the required speed, without compression, and a second transceiver outside the body, with access to more room, power and electronics, can transmit the large data stream wirelessly, if required.
The real question is why such a high data rate with the final outcome is typing speed or game cursor control, i.e. very low data rate? Neuralink should reframe the challenge to find a lossy compression scheme that doesn't alter the outcome. Who cares about lossless if the result is the same? Neuralink should provide a portal to dump imperfectly recoded data, and report the fidelity to the original outcome -- in detail if possible. That way coders can seek the most compressive lossy scheme that does not affect outcome.
It would also be nice if Neuralink released a complete set of data, i.e. 1024 channels, 20KHz sampling rate, 10 bits per sample, for an hour. That would be the starting place in order to find redundancy patterns, perhaps between channels.
I'd also like to say that the data currently provided is inconsistently scaled, and that the A/D data indicates poor linearity of the A/D itself. The A/D needs attention.
The sample data compresses poorly, getting down to 4.5 bits per sample easily with very simple first-order difference encoding and an decent Huffman coder.
However, lets assume there is massive cross-correlation between the 1024 channels. For example, in the extreme they are all the same, meaning if we encode 1 channel we get the other 1023. That means a lower limit of 4.5/1024 = about 0.0045 bits per sample, or a compression rate of 2275. Viola!
If data patterns exist and can be found, then more complicated coding algorithms could achieve better compression, or tolerate more variations (i.e. less cross-correlation) between channels.
We may never know unless Neuralink releases a full data set, i.e. 1024 channels at 20KHz and 10 bits for 1 hour. That's a lot of data, but if they want serious analysis they should release serious data.
Finally, enforcing the requirement for lossless compression has no apparent reason. The end result -- correct data to control the cursor and so on -- is the key. Neuralink should allow challengers to submit DATA to a test engine that compares cursor output for noiseless data to results for the submitted data, and reports the match score, and maybe a graph or something. That sort of feedback might allow participants to create a satisfactory lossy compression scheme.