  We introduce Lemon, an MPI parallel I/O library that is intended to allow for
efficient parallel I/O of both binary and metadata on massively parallel
architectures. Motivated by the demands of the Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics
community, the data is stored in the SciDAC Lattice QCD Interchange Message
Encapsulation format. This format allows for storing large blocks of binary
data and corresponding metadata in the same file. Even if designed for LQCD
needs, this format might be useful for any application with this type of data
profile. The design, implementation and application of Lemon are described. We
conclude with presenting the excellent scaling properties of Lemon on state of
the art high performance computers.
