I have a case where foreach using doMC as a backend produces different behaviors on different machines.
On a linux server running Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS the following code (adapted from the foreach vingette) runs 5 jobs simultaneously on a single core, which is not the desired behavior.
library(foreach)
library(doMC)
registerDoMC(cores=5)
getDoParWorkers()
x <- iris[which(iris[,5] != "setosa"), c(1,5)]
trials <- 10000
r <- foreach(icount(trials), .combine=cbind) %dopar% {
ind <- sample(100, 100, replace=TRUE)
result1 <- glm(x[ind,2]~x[ind,1], family=binomial(logit))
coefficients(result1)
}
Session info:
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.1.0 (2014-04-10)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
locale:
[1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=C LC_COLLATE=C LC_MONETARY=C
[6] LC_MESSAGES=C LC_PAPER=C LC_NAME=C LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=C LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
attached base packages:
[1] parallel stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] doMC_1.3.3 iterators_1.0.7 foreach_1.4.2
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] codetools_0.2-8 compiler_3.1.0 tools_3.1.0
The same code run on a Mac running OSX 10.7.5 produces the desired and expected behavior of running 5 jobs on 5 different cores.
Session info:
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit)
locale:
[1] C
attached base packages:
[1] parallel stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] doMC_1.3.2 iterators_1.0.6 foreach_1.4.1
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] codetools_0.2-8 compiler_3.0.1 tools_3.0.1
I have also observed the same behavior using other parallel backends. Both machines have 20+ cores. Any ideas on what's going on?
The issue was caused by OpenBLAS. Switching to ATLAS solved the problem. The recipe for switching between BLAS libraries in Linux is on Nathan VanHoudnos's blog:
Switching between BLAS libraries
Now we can switch between the different BLAS options that are installed:
sudo update-alternatives --config libblas.so.3gf
There are 3 choices for the alternative libblas.so.3gf (providing /usr/lib/libblas.so.3gf).
Selection Path Priority Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0 /usr/lib/openblas-base/libopenblas.so.0 40 auto mode
1 /usr/lib/atlas-base/atlas/libblas.so.3gf 35 manual mode
2 /usr/lib/libblas/libblas.so.3gf 10 manual mode
3 /usr/lib/openblas-base/libopenblas.so.0 40 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
Side note: If the above returned:
update-alternatives: error: no alternatives for libblas.so.3gf
Try
sudo update-alternatives --config libblas.so.3