[Crib-list] SPEAKER: Amy Szczepanski (University of Tennessee) -- Boston Area R User Group -- IBM Cambridge -- Thurs., July 28 at 6:00 PM

[Shirley Entzminger]

 			Boston Area R User Group

DATE:		Thursday, July 28, 2011
TIME:		6:00 PM
LOCATION:	IBM Facility in Cambridge
 		1 Rogers Street  (not far from MIT)


TITLE:		"Using R in a high performance computing environment"

SPEAKER:	Amy Szczepanski - Remote Data Analysis and Visualization
 				  Center,  University of Tennessee


ABSTRACT:

As data sets get larger and analyses become more sophisticated, laptop and 
desktop computers can no longer handle the demands for processor time and 
memory. Carrying out these larger analyses often requires migrating to 
high performance computing (HPC). There are both key differences and 
noteworthy similarities between HPC systems and traditional desktop 
computers. This talk will explain why understanding these architectures is 
important when moving one's R code to an HPC system and will give an 
overview of the R packages that can be helpful for achieving parallelism 
on various architectures. Furthermore, as R is a memory bound language, we 
will discuss the limitations of R for working with large datasets and some 
of the packages that have been developed to work around these limitations. 
Finally, we will introduce the computational resources managed by XSEDE 
for the NSF and explain how researchers can apply for allocations of time 
on these systems.

The Remote Data Analysis and Visualization Center ( 
http://rdav.nics.tennessee.edu<http://rdav.nics.tennessee.edu/>) operates 
Nautilus, an SGI Altix UV 1000 with 1024 cores and 4 TB shared memory, in 
support of NSF's mission for open science research. Nautilus is an XD 
visualization and data analysis resource, with allocations managed by 
XSEDE ( http://www.xsede.org<http://www.xsede.org/>).


Agenda and abstract is also available at...

      http://www.meetup.com/Boston-useR/events/25366271/