Hiding in the windows faq is the observation that "R's computation is single-threaded, and so it cannot use more than one CPU". So multi-core should make no difference other than allowing R to run with less interruption from other tasks. That is often a significant advantage, though.
>>> Andrew Perrin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 18/12/2007 01:13 >>> On Mon, 17 Dec 2007, Kitty Lee wrote: > Dear R-users, > > I use R to run spatial stuff and it takes up a lot of ram. Runs can take hours or days. I am thinking of getting a new desktop. Can R take advantage of the dual-core system? > > I have a dual-core computer at work. But it seems that right now R is using only one processor. > > The new computers feature quad core with 3GB of RAM. Can R take advantage of the 4 chips? Or am I better off getting a dual core with faster processing speed per chip? > > Thanks! Any advice would be really appreciated! > > K. If I have my information right, R will use dual- or quad-cores if it's doing two (or four) things at once. The second core will help a little bit insofar as whatever else your machine is doing won't interfere with the one core on which it's running, but generally things that take a single thread will remain on a single core. As for RAM, if you're doing memory-bound work you should certainly be using a 64-bit machine and OS so you can utilize the larger memory space. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu Associate Professor of Sociology; Book Review Editor, _Social Forces_ University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
