A storage system includes: a storage device to store an array of data elements associated with a sort operation; a storage interface to facilitate communications between the storage device and a host computer; and a reconfigurable processing device communicably connected to the storage device, the reconfigurable processing device including: memory to store input data read from the storage device, the input data corresponding to the array of data elements stored in the storage device; and a kernel including one or more compute components to execute the sort operation on the input data stored in the memory according to a SORT command received from the host computer. The reconfigurable processing device is to dynamically instantiate the one or more compute components to accelerate the sort operation.