Computer systems and micro architecture researchers have proposed using hardware data compression units within the memory hierarchies of microprocessors in order to improve performance, energy efficiency, and functionality. However, most
past work, and all work on cache compression, has made unsubstantiated assumptions about the performance, power consumption, and area overheads of the proposed compression algorithms and hardware. In this work, I present a lossless compression algorithm that has been designed for fast on-line data compression, and cache compression in particular. The algorithm has a number of novel features tailored for this
application, including combining pairs of compressed lines into one cache line and allowing parallel compression of multiple words while using a single dictionary and without degradation in compression ratio. We reduced the proposed algorithm to a
register transfer level hardware design, permitting performance, power consumption, and area estimation.
C-Pack: Cache Compression for Microprocessor Performance