Hi Ray, > Great news! Many thanks to the h5py team! > > What exactly does it mean for the API to be thread-safe? Can we now > read/write datasets in parallel without using MPI?
It means that you can use h5py objects in a threaded program without manually locking everything. For example, this code: data = dset[0:100] is now an atomic operation; other threads can't interfere with the reading of data. Previously, it was required that such operations be surrounded by threading locks, or bad things might happen while h5py was reading & returning the data. For example, another thread might change the size of the dataset mid-read, with undefined results. MPI is still necessary if you want multiple processes to interact with the file. But other programs (e.g. web servers) which only occasionally talk to HDF5 should have an easier time. Andrew _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected] http://mail.lists.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/hdf5
