An efficient abstract interface for multidimensional array I/O

Our research seeks to provide scientific programmers with simpler, 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 report on our experience to date applying these techniques to applications in computational fluid dynamics in the areas of checkpoint/restart, output data, and visualization. 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. For example, we found that the use of “chunked” physical schemas for arrays gave approximately a factor of 10 improvement in time step output performance on the Intel iPSC/860