I'm confused; mclapply does not work on windows (at least with mc.cores > 1) because fork() is not available on windows. So the original question still seems relevant to me. Dan
----- Original Message ----- > From: "Henrik Bengtsson" <henrik.bengts...@ucsf.edu> > To: "Kasper Daniel Hansen" <kasperdanielhan...@gmail.com> > Cc: "R-devel" <r-devel@r-project.org> > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 8:16:33 PM > Subject: Re: [Rd] Why not pthreads on Windows in 'parallel' package? > > Aaaah ... > > and argh - I should have better not to post R question at midnight, > especially when I know it forks the process and it's not using > threads. > Brain meltdown. (So, we'll proceed trying to use pthreads in > matrixStats > also for Windows). Sorry for the noise and thanks Kasper. > > Henrik > On Aug 15, 2015 02:52, "Kasper Daniel Hansen" > <kasperdanielhan...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > mclapply uses fork which is different from pthreads. As I > > understand it, > > pthreads requires you to rewrite code, fork is a system call which > > takes > > care of completely replicating the current state of the process. > > > > Kasper > > > > On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 5:00 PM, Henrik Bengtsson < > > henrik.bengts...@ucsf.edu> wrote: > > > >> On Windows there are a few 'pthreads' implementation, e.g. > >> pthreads-w32 and winpthreads > >> [ > >> https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-exts.html#Using-pthreads > >> ]. > >> We're thinking of giving them a try for the matrixStats package, > >> and > >> basic tests indicates it works, but since Windows pthreads are not > >> used by core R (or?) I've got a little bit worried that we will > >> face > >> overwhelming problems. > >> > >> So, why are the above Windows implementations not used in the > >> 'parallel' package in order to add multicore support for > >> mclapply() on > >> Windows? Was it tried but found to be unreliable? Was it that no > >> one > >> had the time to do it? License issues? Are there any pointers to > >> old > >> R-devel threads discussing this? > >> > >> Thanks > >> > >> Henrik > >> > >> ______________________________________________ > >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > >> > > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
