I'm writing an application for topology optimization within the ABAQUS PDE. As I have quite some iterations, in each of which FEM is performed, a lot of data is written to the system -- and thus a lot of time is lost on I/O.
Is it possible to limit the amount of information that gets written into the ODB file?
Indeed it's possible. You should check the frequency of your output in the field output section inside the step module. You can configure it in terms of step intervals of time, number of increments, exact amount of outputs, etc.
If you're running your analysis from a inp file, you can add FREQ = X after the *STEP command. This way Abaqus will write on the ODB file every X increments.