n HDFS architecture there is a concept of blocks. A typical block size used by HDFS is 64 MB. When we place a large file into HDFS it chopped up into 64 MB chunks(based on default configuration of blocks), Suppose you have a file of 1GB and you want to place that file in HDFS,then there will be 1GB/64MB = 16 split/blocks and these block will be distribute across the DataNodes. These blocks/chunk will reside on a different DataNode based on your cluster configuration.
Data splitting happens based on file offsets.The goal of splitting of file and store it into different blocks is parallel processing and fail over of data.
Difference between block size and split size.
Split is logical split of your data, basically used during data processing using Map/Reduce program or other processing techniques. Split size is user defined and you can choose your split size based on your data(How much data you are processing).
Split is basically used to control number of Mapper in Map/Reduce program. If you have not defined any input split size in Map/Reduce program then default HDFS block split will be considered as input split.
Example:
Suppose you have a file of 100MB and HDFS default block configuration is 64MB then it will chopped in 2 split and occupy 2 blocks. Now you have a Map/Reduce program to process this data but you have not specified any input split then based on the number of blocks(2 block) input split will be considered for the Map/Reduce processing and 2 mapper will get assigned for this job.
But suppose,you have specified the split size(say 100MB) in your Map/Reduce program then both blocks(2 block) will be considered as a single split for the Map/Reduce processing and 1 Mapper will get assigned for this job.
Suppose,you have specified the split size(say 25MB) in your Map/Reduce program then there will be 4 input split for the Map/Reduce program and 4 Mapper will get assigned for the job.
Conclusion:
Split is a logical division of the input data while block is a physical division of data.
HDFS default block size is default split size if input split is not specified.
Split is user defined and user can control split size in his Map/Reduce program.
One split can be mapping to multiple blocks and there can be multiple split of one block.
The number of map tasks (Mapper) are equal to the number of splits.
If your resource is limited and you want to limit the number of maps you can increase the split size. For example: If we have 640 MB of 10 blocks i.e. each block of 64 MB and resource is limited then you can mention Split size as 128 MB then then logical grouping of 128 MB is formed and only 5 maps will be executed with a size of 128 MB.
If we specify split size is false then whole file will form one input split and processed by one map which it takes more time to process when file is big.