[R-pkgs] doMPI 0.1-3

[Stephen Weston]

I'd like to announce the availability of the new "doMPI" package, a
parallel backend for the "foreach" package, which acts as an adaptor to
the "Rmpi" package.  The package has been uploaded to CRAN and is now
available.

Like the "doSNOW" package, "doMPI" allows you to execute foreach loops
in parallel using "Rmpi" as the underlying transport.  But I was
interested in experimenting with using "Rmpi" directly so that data that
was used in all iterations of a foreach loop could be broadcast to the
cluster workers using the "Rmpi" mpi.bcast function.  I also wanted to
write the package so it could fetch arguments and process results
dynamically, allowing it to handle an arbitrary number of tasks in a
memory efficient way.

The package includes a number of example scripts and an introductory
vignette, in addition to the standard help documentation.  The vignette
also attempts to explain how to run "doMPI" scripts using the Open MPI
"orterun" command, which I hope helps people who are new to "Rmpi" get
started running parallel R programs.

- Steve Weston