[R] Exception while using NeweyWest function with doMC

[David Winsemius]

On Aug 27, 2011, at 3:37 PM, Simon Zehnder wrote:

> Dear R users,
>
> I am using R right now for a simulation of a model that needs a lot of
> memory. Therefore I use the *bigmemory* package and - to make it  
> faster -
> the *doMC* package. See my code posted on http://pastebin.com/dFRGdNrG
>
> Now, if I use the foreach loop with the addon %do% (for sequential  
> run) I
> have no problems at all - only here and there some singularities in
> regressor matrices which should be ok.
> BUT if I run the loop on multiple cores I get very often a bad  
> exception. I
> have posted the exception on http://pastebin.com/eMWF4cu0 The  
> exception
> comes from the NeweyWest function loaded within the sandwich library.
>
> I have no clue, what it want to say me and why it is so weirdly  
> printed to
> the terminal. I am used to receive here and there errors....but the  
> messages
> never look like this.
>
> Does anyone have a useful answer for me, where to look for the cause  
> of this
> weird error?
>
> Here some additional information:
>
> Hardware: MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo, 4 GB Memory 1067 MHz  
> DDR3
> Software System: Mac Os X Lion 10.7.1 (11B26)
> Software App: R64 version 2.11.1 run via Mac terminal

Using the R64 version in a 4GB environment will reduce the effective  
memory capacity since the larger pointers take up more space, and  
using parallel methods is unlikely to improve performance very much  
with only two cores. It also seems likely that there have been several  
bug fixes in the last couple of years since that version of R was  
released, so the package authors are unlikely to be very interested in  
segfault errors thrown by outdated software.

> I hope someone has a good suggestion!

Update R. Don't use features that only reduce performance and make  
unstable a machine that has limited resources.

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT