multi-core processing in R on windows XP - via doMC and foreach
For completeness, here is the requested answer to Tal's comment which provides a simple and portable alternative. The answer consists of running
> library(snow) > help(makeCluster)and running the first three lines of code from the top of the Examples: section:
> cl <- makeCluster(c("localhost","localhost"), type = "SOCK")> clusterApply(cl, 1:2, get("+"), 3)[[1]][1] 4[[2]][1] 5> stopCluster(cl)> .Platform$OS.type[1] "windows"> Was that really that hard?
Add-on packages like doSNOW and thereafter foreach can make use of this in a portable way.
Try the doSNOW parallel backend- it is supported out of the box on Windows. Use it with a snow socket cluster.
You could try doSMP from REvolution Computing.For more information, see this blog posting: Parallel Multicore Processing with R (on Windows)