GSD documentation¶
GSD (General Simulation Data) is a file format specification and a library to read and write it. The package also contains a python module that reads and writes hoomd schema gsd files with an easy to use syntax.
GSD files:
- Efficiently store many frames of data from simulation runs.
- High performance file read and write.
- Support arbitrary chunks of data in each frame (position, orientation, type, etc…).
- Append frames to an existing file with a monotonically increasing frame number.
- Resilient to job kills.
- Variable number of named chunks in each frame.
- Variable size of chunks in each frame.
- Each chunk identifies data type.
- Common use cases: NxM arrays in double, float, int, char types.
- Generic use case: binary blob of N bytes.
- Easy to integrate into other tools with python, or a C API (< 1k lines).
- Fast random access to frames.