Open Science with openPMD

Nobody needs yet an other data format for HPC. But why have so-called self-describing data formats never provided out-of-the-box cross application portability? Why are most open-access datasets not self-describing for both the domain scientist and after-use? And why do communities need to implement their data readers in various post-processing, visualization and analysis frameworks over and over again?

We present the open meta data format openPMD for data format agnostic markup of particle-mesh data. Based on a minimal kernel of meta information and enriched with domain-specific extensions, we develop an open ecosystem of interoperable simulations and data processing frameworks from the domains of laser-plasma interaction, X-ray photon sciences, astrophysics up to systems biology. This poster presents our efforts to enable & establish workflows suitable to frictionless transposition between those domains, using highly scalable I/O methods (e.g. ADIOS BP or HDF5), a truly self-describing data markup and peer reviewed participation.