Future: Unified Parallel and Distributed Processing API for R

The Future package provides a unified API for sequential and parallel processing of R expressions via futures. It implements sequential, multicore, multisession, and cluster futures, allowing evaluation on local machines, in parallel on local machines, or distributed across a mix of local and remote machines. The package was authored by Henrik Bengtsson.

Use Cases

• Parallelizing R code execution on a local machine based on the multisession plan
• Distributing R computations across a cluster of remote machines based on the cluster futures feature
• Switching between sequential and parallel execution without code changes based on the unified API
• Automating the export of global variables and functions for parallel execution based on the described automatic identification

Strengths

• Implements a unified API for sequential, multicore, multisession, and cluster futures
• Automatically identifies and exports global variables and functions as needed for parallel execution
• Allows switching execution backends without modifying user code

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified

Provenance

Source

Henrik Bengtsson

Collection Method

Software package for parallel and distributed computing in R.