crates/clawhdf5-format/src/filters.rs

@@ -183,8 +183,11 @@ enum Stage {
 }
 
 impl DecodeScratch {
-    /// Largest buffer [`trim`](Self::trim) keeps (4 MiB).
-    pub const RETAIN_BYTES: usize = 4 << 20;
+    /// Largest buffer [`trim`](Self::trim) keeps (1 MiB): enough for common
+    /// chunk sizes (a 256 x 256 `f32` chunk is 256 KiB) while bounding what
+    /// every long-lived thread (rayon's workers never exit) holds on to, at
+    /// two buffers each.
+    pub const RETAIN_BYTES: usize = 1 << 20;
 
     /// An empty scratch; buffers are allocated on first use.
     pub fn new() -> Self {

crates/clawhdf5-format/src/parallel_read.rs

@@ -47,6 +47,12 @@ pub fn pool_can_parallelise() -> bool {
 /// item beyond the caller's first.
 pub(crate) fn helper_count(items: usize) -> usize {
     let pool = rayon::current_num_threads();
+    // A one-thread pool means "decode on the calling thread" (the setting
+    // benchmarks use to compare with h5py, where each call decodes on its
+    // caller): no helper, so one read never uses two cores.
+    if pool <= 1 {
+        return 0;
+    }
     let others = if rayon::current_thread_index().is_some() {
         pool.saturating_sub(1)
     } else {