
Chapter 12
I/O Libraries: Past, Present and
Future
Mike Folk
The HDF Group
12.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
12.2 A Recent History of I/O Libraries, by Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
12.3 What Is the Future of I/O Libraries? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
12.1 Motivation
Why do we need an I/O stack? What is the importance of various layers
in the stack? Why do we need I/O libraries?
There was a time when computers mostly exported data to magnetic tape
or punch cards. I/O was pretty simple in those days, but there ...