Meta is developing CRAM: RAM compression for Linux

Meta is developing a RAM compression mechanism for Linux called CRAM (Compressed RAM). Gregory Price of Meta spoke about the work at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague. The report appeared on Phoronix on October 6, 2026.

The interest is easy to explain: memory is in short supply right now, prices for it are high, and demand for capacity keeps growing. According to the source, Meta engineers have been working on CRAM for some time, and the result looks promising precisely against the backdrop of the task of using available memory as efficiently as possible.

The key feature of the approach is that compression is offloaded to hardware, while byte-level access to the compressed memory is preserved. Data can be read line by line, by cache line, as if it had not been compressed. According to Phoronix's assessment, this makes CRAM a better implementation compared to ZRAM and zswap.

Speed

Performance figures are close to ordinary DRAM. Read-only data is read at raw DRAM speed, while writes are noticeably faster than with ZRAM, zswap and ordinary swap. Users who already rely on zswap or ZRAM will, by the description, get near-DRAM speed.

Another important point: most of the individual components needed to support CRAM are already present in the mainline kernel. In other words, this is about assembling and refining existing parts, not building a foundation from scratch.

For now CRAM is not a finished product but a proposal to the community. No timeline is given for when the work might be accepted into the mainline kernel. The author of the publication expects this to happen in the not-too-distant future, but there are no concrete promises.

Legal status in Russia: Meta Platforms Inc.’s activities involving Facebook and Instagram have been designated extremist and prohibited in Russia. According to the Ministry of Justice list, the relevant court decisions do not apply to WhatsApp.

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Translation editors: Соловьев В., Пеков А.