Dear all, I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating. I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited importance. Thanks, Michael Michael Haenlein Assocaite Professor of Marketing ESCP Europe Paris, France [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:38:51 +0200 > From: haenlein at escpeurope.eu > To: r-help at r-project.org > Subject: [R] Powerful PC to run R > > Dear all, > > I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core > i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my > calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations > over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my > laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating. > > I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can > anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I > will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited > importance.( I think my laptop is overheating with firefox trying to execute whatever stupid code hotmail is using? ssh to remote server echos keys faster LOL) The point of the above is that it really depends what you are doing. Heat can com from disk drive as well as silicon. Generally you'd want to consider algorithm and implementation and get profiling info before just buying bigger hammer. If you are thrashing VM, sorting some data may help for example. If it is suited parallelism, you could even try to distribute task over several cheaper computers, hard to knwo.> > Thanks,
Have you considered using Amazon EC2? If you search on http://www.r-bloggers.com, people have written about their experiences. On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Michael Haenlein <haenlein@escpeurope.eu>wrote:> Dear all, > > I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core > i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my > calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations > over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my > laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating. > > I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can > anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I > will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited > importance. > > Thanks, > > Michael > > > Michael Haenlein > Assocaite Professor of Marketing > ESCP Europe > Paris, France > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@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. >-- Hrishi Mittal Founder, Pretty Graph <http://prettygraph.com> Make your data sing! London, UK +44 7910 306 977 Sign up to our newsletter for useful and interesting updates<http://eepurl.com/bqCyj> Our blog - http://www.prettygraph.com/blog/ Follow us on Twitter: @prettygraph <http://twitter.com/prettygraph> Like us on Facebook: Our Facebook Page<http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pretty-Graph/223774442309> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Michael Haenlein <haenlein at escpeurope.eu> wrote:> I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can > anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I > will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited > importance.> Michael Haenlein > Assocaite Professor of MarketingAs a Professor of Marketing surely you buy whatever Apple tell you to? Seriously, 'as fast as possible'? No financial constraints? Then spend several billion in a factory and some hardware developers to run R on bare silicon. Too much? Spend a million on a data centre and stuff it full of rack servers, and some software developers to make your algorithms run in parallel on the cluster. Secondly, speed is massively dependent on exactly what you are doing. Some jobs are I/O-bound, they can only go as fast as they can read in or write out data. Some are limited by available RAM, and start swapping bits of memory to hard disk, slowing things up. Some are CPU-bound and can go faster by plugging in a faster processor. Some are bound by internal bus speeds, and can't shuttle information between RAM and CPU fast enough. The solution to each of these problems is different. For example, there's no point in buying an 8-core CPU if your programs can only use 1 core at a time, and you don't think you'll be running 8 programs at once. Conclusion: for a desktop PC, get as much fast RAM, the fastest CPU and the quickest HD you can find. That should cover all the possible bottlenecks. Barry
Given the price of the Thinkpad X201 I would be very upset if it overheated and would contact my supplier for a replacement. I also understand that this CPU may slow down if it is overheated. You would probably get a better performance from a desktop workstation or a larger laptop with better ventilation. As already stated a large mumer of cpu's and multithreading are of little advantage when you are running standard R. John On 13 May 2011 11:38, Michael Haenlein <haenlein at escpeurope.eu> wrote:> Dear all, > > I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core > i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my > calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations > over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my > laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating. > > I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can > anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I > will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited > importance. > > Thanks, > > Michael > > > Michael Haenlein > Assocaite Professor of Marketing > ESCP Europe > Paris, France > > ? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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. >-- John C Frain Economics Department Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html mailto:frainj at tcd.ie mailto:frainj at gmail.com
On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Michael Haenlein <haenlein at escpeurope.eu> wrote:> I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core > i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my > calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations > over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my > laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating.If you are on Windows press the Windows key and type in Power Options. When the associated dialog pops up choose Power Saver. Now your PC will use less power so it won't heat up so much although your performance could suffer a bit. Also ensure that there is sufficient air circulation around the machine. -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
On May 13, 2011, at 6:38 AM, Michael Haenlein wrote:> Dear all, > > I'm currently running R on my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 (Intel Core > i7 CPU, M620, 2.67 Ghz, 8 GB RAM). The problem is that some of my > calculations run for several days sometimes even weeks (mainly simulations > over a large parameter space). Depending on the external conditions, my > laptop sometimes shuts down due to overheating.You didn't mention whether you are using a 64-bit OS or not. A single 32-bit process can not use more than 2 GB RAM. If your calculations would benefit from the full 8 GB RAM on your machine, you need to be able to run 64-bit R. My understanding is that, on Windows, you either have to install the OS as 32-bit and use all 32-bit software or install 64-bit Windows and run all 64-bit software. A Mac can run 32-bit and 64-bit software simultaneously and I'm not sure about Linux. In the case of Linux, it probably doesn't matter so much because most Linux software is available as open source and you can compile it yourself either way.> > I'm now thinking about buying a more powerful desktop PC or laptop. Can > anybody advise me on the best configuration to run R as fast as possible? I > will use this PC exclusively for R so any other factors are of limited > importance.You need to evaluate whether RAM or raw processor speed is most critical for what you're doing. In my case, I upgraded my Mac Pro to 16 GB RAM and was able to do hierarchical clustering heatmaps overnight which previously took more than a week to compute. Using the Activity Monitor utility, it looks like some of the, even larger, heatmap computations would benefit from 32 GB RAM or more. Linux runs on the widest range of hardware and that allows you the greatest ability to shop around. If RAM is the deciding factor, then you can look around for a machine which can hold as much RAM as possible. If processor speed is the factor, then you can optimize for that. Windows runs on a reasonable array of hardware but has the disadvantage that the OS, itself, uses a lot of resources. The Mac has the advantage of flexibility. When you download the precompiled R package, it comes with both a 32-bit and a 64-bit executable. This is because 32-bit processes run a little faster if you don't need large amounts of RAM. If you do need the RAM, then you run the 64-bit version. Aram Fingal