A system comprises a data storage, a decompression accelerator configured to decompress compressed data and thereby generate decompressed data, and a direct memory access (DMA) engine coupled to the data storage and the decompression accelerator. The DMA engine comprises a buffer for storage of a plurality of descriptors containing configuration parameters for a block of compressed data to be retrieved from the data storage and decompressed by the decompression accelerator, wherein at least one of the descriptors comprises a threshold value. The DMA engine, in accordance with one or more of the descriptors, is configured to read compressed data from data storage and transmit the threshold value and the compressed data to the decompression accelerator. The decompression accelerator is configured to decompress the compressed data until the threshold value is reached and then to abort further data decompression and to assert a stop transaction signal to the DMA engine.