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

[Marius Hofert]

Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> writes:

> 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.

Hi Dirk,

thanks for helping. Indeed, we don't want that. The reason I was asking for is
the following: I am writing a package (jointly with Martin) where we make use of
makeCluster(). The 'natural' default would be to use the default of the
'type' argument ("PSOCK") and leave it up to the user to decide if he wants to replace
it by "MPI". On the other hand, one could make "MPI" the default advocating
'good practice'. Since we are unsure, I thought I ask about the differences
between the two to get a better feeling for what a good default would be.

>
>
> As your mail address reveals that you are coming from a serious place, 

:-)

> you should look into MPI.

we always used it, that's why it became the (internal) default so far. 

Cheers,

Marius


> Or just use N core machines, where N is a big as your grant allows.
>
> Dirk

-- 
ETH Zurich
Dr. Marius Hofert
RiskLab, Department of Mathematics
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8092 Zurich
Switzerland

Phone +41 44 632 2423
http://www.math.ethz.ch/~hofertj
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