zram (previously called compcache) can create RAM based block devices. It is an experimental (staging) module of the Linux kernel since 3.2.

Background information

Startup script

Copy the following script to /etc/init.d/zram:

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          zram
# Required-Start:    $local_fs
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Use compressed RAM as in-memory swap
# Description:       Use compressed RAM as in-memory swap
### END INIT INFO

# Author: Antonio Galea <antonio.galea@gmail.com>
# Thanks to Przemysław Tomczyk for suggesting swapoff parallelization

FRACTION=75

MEMORY=`perl -ne'/^MemTotal:\s+(\d+)/ && print $1*1024;' < /proc/meminfo`
CPUS=`grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo`
SIZE=$(( MEMORY * FRACTION / 100 / CPUS ))

case "$1" in
  "start")
    param=`modinfo zram|grep num_devices|cut -f2 -d:|tr -d ' '`
    modprobe zram $param=$CPUS
    for n in `seq $CPUS`; do
      i=$((n - 1))
      echo $SIZE > /sys/block/zram$i/disksize
      mkswap /dev/zram$i
      swapon /dev/zram$i -p 10
    done
    ;;
  "stop")
    for n in `seq $CPUS`; do
      i=$((n - 1))
      swapoff /dev/zram$i && echo "disabled disk $n of $CPUS" &
    done
    wait
    sleep .5
    modprobe -r zram
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: `basename $0` (start | stop)"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

then you may have to make the script executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/zram

then instruct your system to start it at boot time, with the command

  insserv zram