[R] what is R best for; what should one learn in addition to R

David M Smith david at revolution-computing.com
Mon Apr 20 20:11:29 CEST 2009


On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Stefan Grosse <singularitaet at gmx.net> wrote:
> I know of people doing optimization stuff which needs a
> lot of computational power. They use Matlab since it is easy for them
> to use multiple processors (+multiple pc's). R at the moment only uses
> one processor and also does not yet (there is a project working on it)
> something like just in time compilation which appears to be in Matlab.

R can already use multiple processors. Some builds of R, and all
builds of REvolution R, use mathematical libraries which will run many
computations in parallel on multiprocessor/multicore machines.

It's equally possible to run computations on multiple machines (e.g.
clusters) with packages like ParallelR or snow. (I don't know how easy
this is in Matlab, but it's pretty easy with R.)

Parallel and distributed computing can often help where the
computation runs in R, but takes a long time to complete. A separate
issue is one where the data size is very large, in which case you may
want to consider a 64-bit build of R (we just released one for Windows
- see http://tinyurl.com/cuec9g [blog.revolution-computing.com]) or
using a package like bigmemory or biglm.

# David Smith

--
David M Smith <david at revolution-computing.com>
Director of Community, REvolution Computing www.revolution-computing.com
Tel: +1 (206) 577-4778 x3203 (San Francisco, USA)

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