Unidata

• Starting in 4.0.1, netCDF allows user to specify chunk cache size for the file.
• The cache size for data transfers in HDF5 is 1 MB, by default. This is small for many real applications, so netCDF-4 uses a default cache size of 32 MB.
• The default cache size for netCDF-4 can be changed at configure time.
• Set the cache size so that it can hold multiple chunks of data. If your chunk size is less than your cache size, performance will suffer.
• This does not get set permanently for the variable, it only lasts as long as the file is open.

2009 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > Chunking and Deflating Data with NetCDF-4