[R-sig-hpc] Difference between PSOCK and MPI?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 9 April 2013 at 23:24, Marius Hofert wrote:
| What are the main differences (advantages/drawbacks) between parallel's makeCluster(,
| type="PSOCK") and makeCluster(, type="MPI")? According to
| http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/HighPerformanceComputing.html, MPI has
| become the 'standard', although the default type of makeCluster() is "PSOCK". Is
| "PSOCK" more compatible in that it does not need an installation such as (open)MPI? slower/faster/no difference? 

You don't want PSOCK.  

It is the lowest common demoninator which even works (for various definitions
of "work") on Windoze.

As your mail address reveals that you are coming from a serious place, you
should look into MPI.  Or just use N core machines, where N is a big as your
grant allows.  

Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com