Toward a General I/O Layer for Parallel-Visualization Applications
Wilfrid S. Kendall, Jian Ping Huang, Tom Peterka, Robert P. Latham, Robert B. Ross · IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications · 2011
For large-scale visualization applications, the visualization community urgently needs general solutions for efficient parallel I/O. These parallel visualization solutions should center around design patterns and the related data-partitioning strategies, not file formats. From this respect, it's feasible to greatly alleviate I/O burdens without reinventing the wheel. For example, BIL (Block I/O Layer), which implements such a pattern, has greatly accelerated I/O performance for large-scale parallel particle tracing, a pervasive but challenging use case.