Methods, apparatus and design structures are provided for improving resource utilization by data compression accelerators. An exemplary apparatus for compressing data comprises a plurality of hardware data compression accelerators and a hash table shared by the plurality of hardware data compression accelerators. Each of the plurality of hardware data compression accelerators optionally comprises a first-in-first-out buffer that stores one or more input phrases. The hash table optionally records a location in the first-in-first-out buffers where a previous instance of an input phrase is stored. The plurality of hardware data compression accelerators can simultaneously access the hash table. For example, the hash table optionally comprises a plurality of input ports for simultaneous access of the hash table by the plurality of hardware data compression accelerators. A design structure for a data compression accelerator system is also disclosed.