• Special nc_create_par and nc_open_par functions are used to create/open a netCDF file. The files they open are normal NetCDF-4/HDF5 files, but these functions also take MPI paramters.
• The parallel access associated with these functions is not a characteristic of the data file, but the way it was opened. The data file is the same, but using the parallel open/create function allows parallel I/O to take place.

EXTERNL int
nc_create_par(const char *path, int cmode, MPI_Comm comm, MPI_Info info,
	      int *ncidp);

EXTERNL int
nc_open_par(const char *path, int mode, MPI_Comm comm, MPI_Info info,
	    int *ncidp);

2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > Parallel I/O with NetCDF