[gdal-dev] Memory allocation for NetCDF driver

[Rich Signell]

GDAL gang,

Something to put on the wish list for the NetCDF driver: the ability
to write the data in chunks to the NetCDF file to conserve memory.

I've got a big geoTIFF (20,000 x 15,000) that I wanted to convert to
NetCDF, but ran out of memory:

gdal_translate psdem_2005_geo.tif -of netcdf psdem_2005.nc
Input file size is 20000, 15000
0ERROR 2: CPLMalloc(): Out of memory allocating 1200000000 bytes.

The GMT driver (which also produces NetCDF, but with Z as a 1D array)
works fine.    It looks like the NetCDF driver is trying to allocate
the entire array, which is unnecessary -- the data could be written to
the NetCDF file in rows or groups of rows instead.

Thanks,
-Rich
-- 
Dr. Richard P. Signell   (508) 457-2229
USGS, 384 Woods Hole Rd.
Woods Hole, MA 02543-1598