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Parallelisation

parallelisation.Rmd

Parallelisation

  • Since version 2.0.0, MAMS relies on the package future.apply for parallel computation.
    The package future.apply is part of the future parallelisation framework that requires users to define their parallelisation strategy by means of the function future::plan().
    This function takes several options like, for example:
    • sequential, default strategy corresponding to a computation without parallelisation;
    • multicore, using separate forked R processes, available to unix/osx users;
    • multisession, using separate R sessions, available to all users.
    • cluster, using separate R sessions on one or more machines

We refer to (Bengtsson 2021) for an overview of the future framework.

The performance of each plan varies depending on the operating system and computer specifications. On personal computers, our experience suggests that

  • cluster is optimal for windows machines,

  • multicore is optimal for linux machines,

  • multisession is optimal for OSX machines.

Note that, for the functions of MAMS to be available to workers defined by future::plan(), MAMS has to be installed at a location available under .libPaths (by default, R installs packages in the directory corresponding to the first element of .libPaths).

References

Bengtsson, Henrik. 2021. “A Unifying Framework for Parallel and Distributed Processing in R Using Futures.” The R Journal 13 (2): 208. https://doi.org/10.32614/rj-2021-048.