R help - Mar 2010 - ANNOUNCE--Rdsm package, a threads-like environment for R

My long-promised Rdsm package is now on CRAN.  Some of you may recall
that I made a prototype available on my own Web page last July.  This is
the official version, much evolved since I released the prototype.

The CRAN description states:  

   Provides a threads-like programming environment for R, usable both on
   a multicore machine and across a network of multiple machines. The
   package gives the illusion of shared memory, again even across
   multiple machines on a network.

This is based on a similar package I wrote for Perl back in 2002.

Rdsm should complement the bigmemory package written by Mike Kane and
Jay Emerson.  As noted above and in my July announcement for my
prototype, Rdsm works across a network of machines, while bigmemory is
limited to multicore platforms.  On the other hand, bigmemory is capable
of handling huge data structures, which Rdsm is not.  Rdsm is intended
for parallel/distributed computing, while bigmemory is currently used
primarily for the problems its name implies.  However, if bigmemory is
used as a parallel R vehicle on a multicore machine, it may be faster
than Rdsm for some applications, given its direct use of bare shared
memory; typically, though, they should provide similar performance in
such contexts.  By the way, I have a prototype of an infrastructure
package to facilitate using bigmemory as a parallel R engine. 

Norm Matloff
University of California, Davis

I am interested in Rdsm package, but I have no idea about how to use it.
Where can I find examples?

regards
                                                                             
                Guo-Hao Huang


--------------------------------------------------
From: "Norm Matloff" <matloff at cs.ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 1:37 PM
To: <r-sig-hpc at r-project.org>; <r-help at r-project.org>
Subject: [R] ANNOUNCE--Rdsm package, a threads-like environment for R
>
> My long-promised Rdsm package is now on CRAN.  Some of you may recall
> that I made a prototype available on my own Web page last July.  This is
> the official version, much evolved since I released the prototype.
>
> The CRAN description states:
>
>   Provides a threads-like programming environment for R, usable both on
>   a multicore machine and across a network of multiple machines. The
>   package gives the illusion of shared memory, again even across
>   multiple machines on a network.
>
> This is based on a similar package I wrote for Perl back in 2002.
>
> Rdsm should complement the bigmemory package written by Mike Kane and
> Jay Emerson.  As noted above and in my July announcement for my
> prototype, Rdsm works across a network of machines, while bigmemory is
> limited to multicore platforms.  On the other hand, bigmemory is capable
> of handling huge data structures, which Rdsm is not.  Rdsm is intended
> for parallel/distributed computing, while bigmemory is currently used
> primarily for the problems its name implies.  However, if bigmemory is
> used as a parallel R vehicle on a multicore machine, it may be faster
> than Rdsm for some applications, given its direct use of bare shared
> memory; typically, though, they should provide similar performance in
> such contexts.  By the way, I have a prototype of an infrastructure
> package to facilitate using bigmemory as a parallel R engine.
>
> Norm Matloff
> University of California, Davis
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

Guo-Hao Huang wrote:
> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:55:35 +0800
> From: "Guo-Hao Huang" <guohao.huang at gmail.com>
> To: "Norm Matloff" <matloff at cs.ucdavis.edu>
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] ANNOUNCE--Rdsm package, a threads-like environment
> 	for R
> 
> I am interested in Rdsm package, but I have no idea about how to use it.
> Where can I find examples?
> 
> regards
>
>                 Guo-Hao Huang
 
There are examples there in the package, in the examples/ directory.
The file examples/README will tell you what to do in quick-start form.
                                                                               
Also, after loading the Rdsm library, type
>  help(Rdsm)
at the R interactive prompt, for further information.  If you have further
questions, feel free to contact me.

Norm