[R] Is R on Windows multi-threaded

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Greg Snow wrote:

> Someone else suggested the snow package, but I don't think it is 
> available for windows.

It is.  From http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.6/ReadMe

   Although the packages
     ROracle, and snow
   pass make check, it seems to be dangerous to distribute them:
   I do not have the software available these packages depend on.

It compiles from the sources, and using snow alone you can run socket 
clusters on Windows (by default it expects ssh to be running, and Windows 
machines rarely run an ssh daemon so as to accept incoming ssh).  The 
caution is that the packages runs no tests so needs manual intervention to 
test it, and in particular most people will want to run snow over Rmpi 
which does not compile on Windows without more software (and some effort).

It might be worth modifying snow to more easily run multiple processes on 
a single machine.


>I have been able to get the nws package to work 
> on a duel core machine using windows and it did speed up my tests (and 
> was fairly straight forward to use).

Dueling cores can be apt ....

> ________________________________
>
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org on behalf of Rees, David
> Sent: Fri 1/11/2008 7:28 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Is R on Windows multi-threaded
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> A previous thread suggests that R on Windows is multi-threaded
>
> http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/03b/6946.html
>
> When I'm running R 2.5.1 on a dual core pc I get Rgui.exe uses up to 50%
> of the available cpu and the rest is not used. i.e. it only uses one
> cpu. I'm soon going to get a nice shiny new 8 cpu machine which it would
> be very nice to fully utilize.
>
> Is there any way to get R to use all the cpus - should this happen
> automatically?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Regards,
> David
>
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595