A compression circuit includes a buffer, a selection circuit, a compare circuit, and a control circuit. The buffer stores uncompressed data. The selection circuit generates a read pointer value to the buffer. The control circuit contains a programmable configuration register. The configuration register stores a depth value for reading uncompressed data from the history buffer. The control circuit generates control signals to the selection circuit to cause the selection circuit to iteratively increment the read pointer value from an initial value to a second value that corresponds to the depth value. Responsive to the second value corresponding to the depth value, the control circuit resets the read pointer value to the initial value. The compare circuit compares input symbols from a data source to uncompressed data from the buffer history to thereby generate output compressed data.