BAM Compression Levels - Runtimes and compression ratios

[yashpatel6]

With the parameter gatk_ir_compression available in the pipeline, we've briefly looked into comparing the runtime and compression efficiency at the different compression levels available for BAMs (0-9). The results are as follow:

Generally, compression does reduce file size as compression level increases, however the space gained becomes nearly negligible compared to the spike in runtime. Optimal compression considering both disk space and runtime would be in the 3-5 range.