Programming with Big Data in R: Difference between revisions

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'''Programming with Big Data in R''' (pbdR)<ref>{{cite web|author=Ostrouchov, G., Chen, W.-C., Schmidt, D., Patel, P.|title=Programming with Big Data in R|year=2012|url=http://r-pbd.org}}</ref> is a series of [[R (programming language)|R]] packages and an environment for [[statistical computing]] with [[Big Data]] by utilizing high-performance statistical computation.<ref>{{cite web|author=Chen, W.-C. and Ostrouchov, G.|url=http://thirteen-01.stat.iastate.edu/snoweye/hpsc/|year=2011|title=HPSC -- High Performance Statistical Computing for Data Intensive Research}}</ref> The pbdR uses the same programming language as R with [[S (programming language)|S3/S4]] classes and methods which is used among [[statistician]]s and [[Data mining|data miners]] for developing [[statistical software]]. The significant difference between pbdR and R codes is pbdR mainly focuses on [[distributed memory]] system where data are distributed across several processors and analyzed in a [[Batch processing|batch mode]], while communications between processors are based on [[Message Passing Interface|MPI]] which is easily utilized in large [[High-performance computing|high-performance computing (HPC)]] systems. R system mainly focuses{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}} on single [[Multi-core processor| multi-core]] machines for data analysis via an interactive mode such as [[Graphical user interface|GUI interface]].

Two main implementations in [[R (programming language)|R]] using [[Message Passing Interface|MPI]] are Rmpi<ref name=rmpi>{{cite journal|author=Yu, H.|title=Rmpi: Parallel Statistical Computing in R|year=2002|url=http://cran.r-project.org/package=Rmpi|journal=R News}}</ref> and pbdMPI of pbdR.

* The pbdR built on pbdMPI uses [[SPMD|SPMD parallelism]] where every processors are considered as workers and own parts of data. The [[SPMD|SPMD parallelism]] introduced in mid 1980 is particularly efficient in homogeneous computing environments for large data, for example, performing [[Singular value decomposition|singular value decomposition]] on a large matrix, or performing [[Mixture model|clustering analysis]] on high-dimensional large data. On the other hand, there is no restriction to use [[Master/slave (technology)|manager/workers parallelism]] in [[SPMD|SPMD parallelism]] environment.

* The Rmpi<ref name=rmpi/> uses [[Master/slave (technology)|manager/workers parallelism]] where one main processor (manager) servers as the control of all other processors (workers). The [[Master/slave (technology)|manager/workers parallelism]] introduced around early 2000 is particularly efficient for large tasks in small [[Computer cluster|clusters]], for example, [[Bootstrapping (statistics)|bootstrap method]] and [[Monte Carlo method|Monte Carlo simulation]] in applied statistics since [[Independent and identically distributed random variables|i.i.d.]] assumption is commonly used in most [[Statistics|statistical analysis]]. In particular, task pull parallelism has better performance for Rmpi in heterogeneous computing environments.