1. A hardware decompressor, the decompressor comprising: a hardware device disposed between a processing unit and a physical computer memory, wherein the hardware device is configured to: receive a memory access read request, the received request causing a cache miss or page fault; determine whether data requested by the memory access read request is in a compressed memory block; responsive to a determination that the data requested by the memory access read request is not in a compressed memory block, forward the memory access read request to the physical computer memory; responsive to a determination that the data requested by the memory access read request is in a compressed memory block, determine whether the data from the compressed memory block has been previously decompressed and stored in a dedicated storage medium local to the hardware device; responsive to a determination that the data from the compressed memory block is stored in the storage medium, return the data from the storage medium in response to the memory access read request; and responsive to a determination that the data from the compressed memory block is not stored in the storage medium, allocate storage space in the storage medium; read the data from the compressed memory block; decompress the read data from the compressed memory block into the storage medium; and return the decompressed data from the storage medium in response to the memory access read request.