Re: size limits in HDF5...

[Quincey Koziol <koziol@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ed,

On Apr 25, 2007, at 4:08 PM, Ed Hartnett wrote:

> Howdy all HDF5 people!
>
> I have a question about the possible sizes of HDF5 datasets.
>
> What is the maximum size of a HDF5 dataset?
>
> I have searched the HDF5 docs and can't find an answer to this
> question...
>
> If you can refer me to a place in the docs where this is discussed,
> that would be very helpful.

	Probably someone else can help you with a citation from the  
documentation, I'm responding with respect to the library internals:   
The library currently allows up to 32 dimension dataspaces, and each  
dimension can have up to an unsigned 64-bit value.  Each datatype can  
be somewhat arbitrarily large, since you can have array datatypes or  
compound datatypes that are very large.  Multiplying those two  
factors together gives you a theoretical upper limit probably in the  
thousands of bits of for a dataset's size.  However, the library  
currently only supports 64-bit offsets (although that's easily  
adjustable when we need files over 16 exabytes... ;-), so that's the  
practical upper limit.

	Quincey

P.S. - Yes, I really am on vacation, I just am reading some e-mail  
before going to sleep... :-)

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