A system and method provide parallel compression of a single data stream is provided. A data stream entering a storage encryption processor is split by a splitting stage into a plurality of substantially equal segments. Each of the segments is stored in one of a first set of memories in a round robin fashion. Each memory has an associated compression core that reads the segments associated with each memory and compresses the data before storing the compressed segments in a second set of memories. A merging stage reads the compressed segments from the second set of memories and creates a single compressed data stream.