Abstract: A system and method for accelerating compaction includes a compaction accelerator. The accelerator includes a compactor separate from a processor performing read and write operations for a database or a data store. The compactor is configured to receive a table to be compacted and entries written in the table, each of the entries being associated with a timestamp indicating when they were respectively written; identify, using a plurality of sort engines operating in parallel, the entries that were written last based on the timestamps; mark, using a plurality of marker engines operating in parallel, older copies of the entries for deletion; create, using the plurality of marker engines, tombstones for the older copies; create a compacted table, including the entries that were last written; delete the tombstones and the entries associated with the tombstones; and generate a freemap based on storage locations of the entries associated with the tombstones.