Computational Storage to Increase the Analysis Capability of Tier-2 HEP Data Sites

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces collision data at 100 PB/year which needs to be stored and analyzed for high energy physics (HEP) theories. We reconsider the design choices of HEP data centers and evaluate different upgrade options to improve their analysis capacity.Results show that computational storage to be the cost-effective and power-efficient upgrade option. Computational disks in the storage cluster deliver a 9.3-fold speedup for Higgs Boson analysis. This exceeds the speedup from all other upgrades considered (faster network: 100 to 1000 Gbps, upgrade from HDDs to SSDs).