Compressed Memory
Compressed Memory keeps your Mac fast and responsive by freeing up memory when you need it most. When your system’s memory begins to fill up, Compressed Memory automatically compresses the least recently used items in memory, compacting them to about half their original size. When these items are needed again, they can be instantly uncompressed.
Compressed Memory improves total system bandwidth and responsiveness, allowing your Mac to handle large amounts of data more efficiently. Through use of the dictionary- based WKdm algorithm, compression and decompression are faster than reading and writing to disk. If your Mac needs to swap files on disk, compressed objects are stored in full-size segments, which improves read/write efficiency and reduces wear and tear on SSD and flash drives. The advantages of Compressed Memory include the following:
• Shrinks memory usage. Compressed Memory reduces the size of items in memory that haven’t been used recently by more than 50 percent, freeing memory for the applications you are currently using.
• Improves power efficiency. Compressed Memory reduces the need to read and write virtual memory swap files on disk, improving the power efficiency of your Mac.
• Minimizes CPU usage. Compressed Memory is incredibly fast, compressing or decom- pressing a page of memory in just a few millionths of a second.
• Is multicore aware. Unlike traditional virtual memory, Compressed Memory can run in parallel on multiple CPU cores, achieving lightning-fast performance for both reclaiming unused memory and accessing seldom-used objects in memory.
