[R] Need advice on using R with large datasets

[Peter Dalgaard]

"Liaw, Andy" <andy_liaw at merck.com> writes:

> On a dual Opteron 244 with 16GB ram, and 
> 
> [andy at leo:cb1]% free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:      16278648   14552676    1725972          0     229420    3691824
> -/+ buffers/cache:   10631432    5647216
> Swap:      2096472      13428    2083044
> 
> ... using freshly compiled R-1.9.0:
> 
> > system.time(x <- numeric(1e9))
> [1]  3.60  8.09 15.11  0.00  0.00
> > object.size(x)/1024^3
> [1] 7.45058


Well,

> system.time(mean(x))
[1]   15.80   20.94 1323.01    0.00    0.00
> object.size(x)/1024^3
[1] 7.45058

I suppose I just have to look forward to RAM prices dropping...
(Actually, the OS should be able to do better. Should be able to read
the data from disk at about 20s/GB.)

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907