System and method for compressing activation data

A method for adapting a trained neural network is provided. Input data is input to the trained neural network and a plurality of filters are applied to generate a plurality of channels of activation data. Differences between corresponding activation values in the plurality of channels of activation data are calculated and an order of the plurality of channels is determined based on the calculated differences. The neural network is adapted so that it will output channels of activation data in the determined order. The ordering of the channels of activation data is subsequently used to compress activation data values by taking advantage of a correlation between activation data values in adjacent channels.