[R] My surprising experience in trying out REvolution's R

[Dieter Menne]

Jason Liao <JLIAO <at> hes.hmc.psu.edu> writes:

> I care a lot about R's speed. So I decided to give REvolution's R
> (http://revolution-computing.com/) a try, which bills itself as an
> optimized R. Note that I used the free version.
> 
> My machine is a Intel core 2 duo under Windows XP professional. The code
> I run is in the end of this post.
> 
> First, the regular R 1.9. It takes 2 minutes and 6 seconds, CPU usage
> 50%
> 
> Next, REvolution's R. It takes 2 minutes and 10 seconds, CPU usage 100%.
> 
> In other words, REvolution's R consumes double the CPU with slightly
> less speed.

The fact that it is the same time with only the 50%/100% makes me think
this is an artifact of the CPU indicator. Try to assign only one CPU to 
the REvolution task. Wild guess: also 2 minutes plus minus

Dieter