1. An apparatus for parallel decompression of a compressed file, the compressed file having a plurality of compressed blocks, the compressed file comprising independent data and dependent, run length encoded (“RLE”) data having data-dependent references spanning multiple compressed blocks of the plurality of compressed blocks, the apparatus comprising: a first, nonvolatile memory storing the compressed file; one or more decompression processors or processor cores, of a plurality of processors or processor cores, adapted to partially decompress a selected block into the independent data, the dependent RLE data, and any linked dependent RLE data; and one or more aggregation and merge processors or processor cores, of the plurality of processors or processor cores, at least one aggregation and merge processor or processor core adapted to sequence the independent data, dependent RLE data, and linked dependent RLE data from a plurality of partial decompressions of the plurality of compressed blocks, and at least one aggregation and merge processor or processor core adapted to obtain data specified by the dependent RLE data and linked dependent RLE data, and to insert the obtained data into an uncompressed data file.