1. A method performed by a network-attached storage (NAS) device comprising a processor and memory, the method executed by the processor and comprising: receiving, at the NAS device, an instruction from an application server that causes the NAS device to perform a computation that uses arrays of data that are stored by the NAS device as inputs, the instruction comprising a plurality of remote procedure calls that identify operations that are included in the computation, the remote procedure calls comprising a first remote procedure call operable for causing the NAS device to perform a read operation on a first file stored by the NAS device and containing an array of data to be used as an input for the computation, the remote procedure calls further comprising a second remote procedure call operable for causing the NAS device to perform an array operation using the array of data from the first file; executing the read operation and the array operation on the NAS device to produce a result; and storing the result in a second file in a location in a file system managed by the NAS device and accessible to the application server.