Multidimensional array I/O in Panda 1.0

Large multidimensional arrays are a common data type in high-performance scientific applications. Without special techniques for handling input and output, I/O can easily become a large fraction of execution time for applications using these arrays, especially on parallel platforms. Our research seeks to provide scientific programmers with simpler and more abstract interfaces for accessing persistent multidimensional arrays, and to produce advanced I/O libraries supporting more efficient layout alternatives for these arrays on disk and in main memory. We have created the Panda (Persistence AND Arrays) I/O library as a result of developing interfaces and libraries for applications in computational fluid dynamics in the areas of checkpoint, restart, and time-step output data. In the applications we have studied, we find that a simple, abstract interface can be used to insulate programmers from physical storage implementation details, while providing improved I/O performance at the same time.(A preliminary version of this paper was presented at Supercomputing '94.)