Unidata

4.9 Parallel Access with NetCDF-4

Parallel file system I/O is supported for netCDF-4 files.

Use the special parallel open (or create) calls to open (or create) a file, and then to use parallel I/O to read or write that file. C programmers see nc_open_par, Fortran programmers see NF_OPEN_PAR).

NetCDF-4 uses the HDF5 parallel programming model. The HDF5 tutorial (http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5//HDF5/Tutor) is a good reference.

Since the API for netCDF-4/HDF5 files is the same as the API for classic files, parallel I/O code written for netCDF-4/HDF5 will also work for classic files, when reading the file.

It is not possible to create a classic or 64-bit offset file with parallel access, or write to classic or 64-bit files in parallel with the netCDF library.