2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > Chunking Data with NetCDF-4
12.4 The Cache in NetCDF-4
The cache is used when reading or writing data. Set the cache size
correctly for each variable to improve performance.
- The cache size for data transfers in HDF5 is 1 MB, by
default. This is small for many real applications.
- Starting in 4.0.1, netCDF allows user to specify cache size for
each variable. This is a new feature, still being tested.
- Currently only available in the C API, it will soon be added to
the Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 APIs.
- 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.
2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > Chunking Data with NetCDF-4
