Greetings,
We recently obtained a new computer in our lab with a Pentium 4 3.86 GHz
processor and 4 gb of ram running windows xp with service pack 2. After
installing R on this machine, I ran a bit of code and found that the
execution time was actually significantly slower than a machine running
windows xp with an older Pentium chip 1.73 GHz and 1 gb of ram. After
speaking with the manufacturer of the new machine, I am told that the
processor in the new machine is 64 bit whereas I believe the processor in
the old machine is 32 bit. I have tried to sort through the
documentation on the CRAN page relative to performance of R under the 32
vs 64 bit sub architecture, however, I am no computer genius and find some
of this stuff extremely confusing. In a CRAN document entitled
"Installation and Administration" , there is reference to sub
architecture... it reads:
8.1 Windows
Currently the Windows build of R is a 32-bit executable. This runs happily
on Windows 64 on AMD64 and EM64T, but is limited to (we are told) a 2GB
address space. It will not be possible to build a native version for
Windows 64 until suitable compilers are available, and currently
(mid-2006) that is not in prospect.
So my question is: are there any options to allow R to take advantage of
the faster chip, (with 64 bit architecture), and more ram. I see in the
documentation that a linux version of R may be able to take advantage of
this chip... is that true what would be involved in making that work? Are
there other options? As we are beginning to use R more and more around
here, we may send this computer back and get a celeron 3.2 GHz chip that
has 32 bit architecture... is this an intelligent choice?
Thanks in advance for considering my question,
Lew Coggins
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