About NetWorkSpaces (R package nws) from REvolution Computing

Jay Emerson, Yale University

This page is no longer being maintained; I strongly recommend you start by looking at package 'foreach' with a range of parallel backends (use of NetWorkSpaces isn't required). Some are much easier to use.

In the simplest case, you can use NWS to take advantage of multiple cores on the same machine. I even use it on my 2-core laptop. To do this, you must have the nws package (CRAN) and a NWS server (open source, available on sourceforge, with more comments on this below). The CRAN package nws will not be sufficient on its own.

Of course, more interested distributed computing is supported, but one instance of the NWS server is still required, and each client must have the nws package as well as Python (which will be standard on most non-Windows environments).

You can download the nws package directly from CRAN, or use R's package installer GUI.

It will also be necessary to have Python installed (which should be standard in most Linux and Mac environments, but is not standard in Windows). This is available at http://www.python.org. However, if you use the Windows NWS server installer (below), it will handle the Python installation for you. You may also be able to use the installer to install Python without needing the NWS server.

NetWorkSpaces (NWS) requires a server to facilitate the communication between the master R session and the clients (workers). The R package nws is needed by the master and the clients, but access to a NWS server is also needed. The installation of the server is somewhat more difficult (and less well documented at the moment) than the installation of the nws package itself. We will keep this page updated as new information or formal installers become available from REvolution.

A slightly old version of the Windows NWS server installer is available here; a newer one may be available shortly. Note that the server could be running on a Windows machine, supporting the master and clients on any platforms (not necessarily on the same machine running the server).

There is some documentation for UNIX installations available here from the NetWorkSpaces for R page on sourceforge.