News

Rmpi version 0.7-1 is released to CRAN.

Since version 3, OpenMPI puts a limit on the max number of slaves to be spawned. It depends on the number of physical cores, not HT cores. So if you have 4 physical cores, only 3 slaves are allowed to be spawned.

With Microsoft MPI version 8.1 or new, spawning is supported. Now Rmpi can be run through Rstudio. See updated instructions for Windows.

Due to discontinuation of MPICH2 for Windows, support of Rmpi under Windows's MPICH2 will be removed in Rmpi 0.6-4 or newer. Instead Microsoft MPI will be used.

To compile Rmpi against OpenMPI version 1.7 or 1.8, "configure --disable-dlopen" must be used to configure OpenMPI. Otherwise there are many lib loading errors like

R: symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/openmpi/mca_shmem_mmap.so: undefined symbol: mca_base_component_var_register

A MPI type CRAY has been added to configure.ac. This allows Rmpi to be compiled on a Cray cluster with Cray's own MPICH2.

Rmpi version 0.6-3 is released to CRAN.

For Mac OS X users, instructions to use homebrew to install Open MPI and Rmpi are given at here.

Rmpi version 0.6-1 is released to CRAN.

It seems that the option --disable-dlopen is not necessary to install Open MPI 1.6, at least on Debian. With default installation of Open MPI 1.6, Rmpi 0.6-1 doesn't produce those dreadful "mca" errors. Using .onLoad instead of .FirstLib might fix this problem.

For MPICH2 windows, using wmpiconfig to setup multiple hosts is no longer working. Instead smpd.exe must be used to set up hosts. See the newly modified instructions for windows.

mpi.bcast.cmd has been rewrittten so that it is possible to make slaves not use CPU while waiting. Starting from Rmpi 0.6-1, use  mpi.spawn.Rslaves() to create such slaves. Otherwise use mpi.spawn.Rslaves(nonblock=FALSE) for the original behaves. With Rprofile starting, you need to modify it and change the option nonblock=FALSE to nonblock=TRUE. As a side product, it seems that mpi.spawn.Rslaves() is less likely to be locked up under all platforms.

Rmpi version 0.6-0 is released to CRAN.

32 and 64bit Windows binary Rmpi compiled under R 2.15.1 is available at here. If you plan to use 64bit Rmpi under 64bit R 2.15.1, please install and use 64bit MPICH2 1.4.1p1 or later. Please note that this binary Rmpi works only on Windows 7 platform with either 32 or 64bit. 

Rmpi version 0.5-9 is released to CRAN.

It has been discovered that there is an issue spawning under R.2.11.1 on multiple Windows PCs. mpi.spawn.Rslaves() is stopped even all slaves are spawned locally and remotely. Until this issue is resolved, please stay with R.2.10.1 or lower. However you can still use Rmpi under R.2.11.1 on a single Window PC.

I find a way how to run the newest R under Windows 64bit. See here for instructions.

CRAN now includes Leopard version of Rmpi. On a CRAN site, please go to "R Binaries" => "macosx"=>"leopard"=>"contrib" to download Rmpi_xxx.tgz.

DeinoMPI versions of Rmpi 0.5-6 (official) and 0.5-7 (dev), compiled under R 2.8.1 and Rtools 2.8, are available for downloading.

Rmpi version 0.5-6 has been released to CRAN. Windows and Mac OS X binary will be provided shortly.

After modifying R's Makeconf files to point to Leopard SDK path, I got Rmpi compiled under Leopard. Hopefully the new universal binary Rmpi (openmpi) does not need Leopard packages installed.

Universal binary Rmpi (openmpi) version 0.5-5 for Mac OS X Leopard is available for downloading. 

Binary version of Rmpi for DeinoMPI under Windows is created. See here for instructions.

Universal binary Rmpi (lam) version 0.5-5 for Mac OS X is available for downloading.

Rmpi version 0.5-4 runs under OpenMPI, LAM, MPICH(1.2) or MPICH2.

Rmpi version 0.5-4 or later is required if R 2.6.0 is used.

(last update 03/08/2013)