[R-SIG-Mac] FAQ? Mac distributed/multiple processor solutions?

[Richard Pearson]

Hi Rob

You might want to look at the snow package. This can be used either with 
Rmpi or without (using socket connections). I've successfully used this 
for speeding up things on multi-node clusters, and also on a single 
multi-core mac. I've included some brief instructions on getting things 
working in chapter 6 of the user guide for my (bioconductor) package 
puma - hope this helps!

Richard.


Rob Forsyth wrote:
> I felt this must be an FAQ but I don't see it anywhere: my apologies  
> if I've missed it.
>
> I have what I believe is known as an "embarrassingly parallel"  
> problem comprising a large number of repetitions of a single  
> (lengthy) calculation that generates a boolean result and I am simply  
> interested in the final proportion of true to false runs. This  
> obviously lends itself to parallel computation and I'd appreciate Mac- 
> specific pointers to both simple distributed and multiple-processor  
> options here. I am working on an iMac G5 and could access (at home -  
> i.e. not on a LAN) another G5 and a G4. I've come across the R/MPI  
> package but would appreciate advice as to how easy this is to set up  
> (would it actually be simpler to divide the job "manually"?).  
> Alternatively I have an option to acquire a MacPro for this work and  
> would appreciate guidance as to whether it's possible to leverage  
> multiple processors?  I'm aware R itself is not currently  
> multithreaded (whilst having only a lay understanding of what that  
> means).
>
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