[Rd] multi-threaded R current status?

Luke Tierney luke@stat.umn.edu
Fri, 12 Apr 2002 14:44:35 -0500


Sounds like what you need (given that Python is involved with it's
global interpreter lock) is concurrent threads, not full parellelism.
That is at least feasible, though it's a non-trivial effort and it
remains to be seen if we have the resources to pull it off.  Full
parallelism at the R level is much harder; not clear it is
realistically feasible at all.

On the other hand, there are some simple things involving threading
vectorized arithmetic operations for speedup on multi=processors that
we are likely to look into fairly soon and that may turn out to be
useful.

luke

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:26:18PM -0400, Duncan Temple Lang wrote:
> I plan to attack this in mid May unless Luke or others get there
> first.  As I have mentioned before, making the R engine reentrant
> and/or thread-safe will probably not be all that is needed for your
> purposes, and fixing the packages, especially those with native (C,
> C++ & Fortran) code is also necessary. That is why I have been working
> on a tool that aids in the task of removing the global variables.
> 
> Also, it may be prudent to prioritize an adequate security model in
> your application over allowing concurrent intrusions :-)
> 
>  D.
> 
> Warnes, Gregory R wrote:
> > 
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > What is the current status of removing the global variables etc that is
> > required to permit multi-threading R?
> > 
> > I'm developing a web application tool for/using R, python (www.python.org),
> > and Zope (www.zope.org), and it would be really convenient if I could use
> > something like RPy to communicate with several concurrent R sessions,
> > preferably within the same process space.  
> > 
> > -Greg
> > 
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> -- 
> _______________________________________________________________
> 
> Duncan Temple Lang                duncan@research.bell-labs.com
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-- 
Luke Tierney
University of Minnesota                      Phone:           612-625-7843
School of Statistics                         Fax:             612-624-8868
313 Ford Hall, 224 Church St. S.E.           email:      luke@stat.umn.edu
Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA                    WWW:  http://www.stat.umn.edu
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