HDF5 Technical Notes

Technical Notes for HDF5 Library and Driver Developers

This informal volume of technical notes is of interest to those who develop and maintain the HDF5 library and related, closely-coupled drivers. These notes are not generally of interest to applications developers and certainly not of interest to users. (Some of these documents may be somewhat out of date as they were working papers for the design process.)
Memory Management		A discussion of memory management issues in HDF5
Memory Management and Free Lists		Notes regarding the implementation of free lists and memory management
Heap Management		A discussion of the H5H heap management fuctions
Raw Data Storage		A discussion of the storage of raw HDF5 data
Virtual File Layer		A description of the HDF5 virtual file layer (VFL), a public API for the implementation of custom I/O drivers
List of VFL Functions		A list of the VFL functions, `H5FD*`
I/O Pipeline		A description of the raw data I/O pipeline
Large Datasets on Small Machines		A guide to accessing large datasets on small computers
Relocating a File Data Structure		A discussion of the issues involved in moving file data structures once they have been cached in memory
Working with External Files		A guide to the use of multiple files with HDF5
Object Headers		A discussion of the H5O object header functions
Symbol Table Caching Issues		A discussion of issues involving caching of object header messages in symbol table entries
HDF4/HDF5 Compatibility		A discussion of compatibility issues between HDF4 and HDF5
Testing the Chunked Layout of HDF5		A white paper discussing the motivation to implement raw data chunking in the HDF5 library
Library Maintenance		A discussion of HDF5 library maintenance issues
Code Review		Code Review 1 and 2
Release Version Numbers		A description of HDF5 release version numbers
Naming Schemes		A discussion of naming schemes for HDF5 library modules, functions, datatypes, etc.
Thread Safe HDF5 Library Implementation		A report on the implementation of a thread safe HDF5 library.
Reserved File Address Space		Description of HDF5's internal system for ensuring that files stay within their address space.
Using HDF5 with OpenMP		A short report on using HDF5 with OpenMP.
HDF5 Software Controls		Descriptions of the HDF5 knobs and controls, such as the environment variables and settings that control the functionality of the HDF5 libraries and tools.
Daily Test Explained		An explanation of the Daily Testing for HDF software conducted.
Test Review		Results of reviewing tests for API functions.
Basic Performance Tools		A description of the three basic performance tools (chunk, iopipe, overhead).

HDF5 documents and links
Introduction to HDF5

HDF5 User's Guide
HDF5 Application Developer's Guide
HDF5 Reference Manual

The HDF Group Help Desk:

Describes HDF5 Release 1.6.10, November 2009

Last modified: 25 September 2003