[R] How to utilise dual cores and multi-processors on WinXP

[Greg Snow]

The nws package does run on windows and can split calculations between
multiple R processes.  I have not tried it with a single multiprocessor
pc (don't have one), but have used it with multiple pc's.  It looks like
the muliprocessor pc would work pretty much with the defaults.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at intermountainmail.org
(801) 408-8111
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
> rhelp.20.trevva at spamgourmet.com
> Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 8:33 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] How to utilise dual cores and multi-processors on WinXP
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have a question that I was wondering if anyone had a fairly 
> straightforward answer to: what is the quickest and easiest 
> way to take advantage of the extra cores / processors that 
> are now commonplace on modern machines? And how do I do that 
> in Windows?
> 
> I realise that this is a complex question that is not 
> answered easily, so let me refine it some more. The type of 
> scripts that I'm dealing with are well suited to 
> parallelisation - often they involve mapping out parameter 
> space by changing a single parameter and then re-running the 
> simulation 10 (or n times), and then brining all the results 
> back to gether at the end for analysis. If I can distribute 
> the runs over all the processors available in my machine, I'm 
> going to roughly halve the run speed. The question is, how to do this?
> 
> I've looked at many of the packages in this area: rmpi, snow, 
> snowFT, rpvm, and taskPR - these all seem to have the 
> functionality that I want, but don't exist for windows. The 
> best solution is to switch to Linux, but unfortunately that's 
> not an option. 
> 
> Another option is to divide the task in half from the 
> beginning, spawn two "slave" instances of R (e.g. via Rcmd), 
> let them run, and then collate the results at the end. But 
> how exactly to do this and how to know when they're done?
> 
> Can anyone recommend a nice solution? I'm sure that I'm not 
> the only one who'd love to double their computational speed...
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
> 
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