Problem Description:
I have a big matrix c
, loaded in RAM memory. My goal is through parallel processing to have read only access to it. However when I create the connections either I use doSNOW
, doMPI
, big.matrix
, etc the amount to ram used increases dramatically.
Is there a way to properly create a shared memory, where all the processes may read from, without creating a local copy of all the data?
Example:
libs<-function(libraries){# Installs missing libraries and then load them
for (lib in libraries){
if( !is.element(lib, .packages(all.available = TRUE)) ) {
install.packages(lib)
}
library(lib,character.only = TRUE)
}
}
libra<-list("foreach","parallel","doSNOW","bigmemory")
libs(libra)
#create a matrix of size 1GB aproximatelly
c<-matrix(runif(10000^2),10000,10000)
#convert it to bigmatrix
x<-as.big.matrix(c)
# get a description of the matrix
mdesc <- describe(x)
# Create the required connections
cl <- makeCluster(detectCores ())
registerDoSNOW(cl)
out<-foreach(linID = 1:10, .combine=c) %dopar% {
#load bigmemory
require(bigmemory)
# attach the matrix via shared memory??
m <- attach.big.matrix(mdesc)
#dummy expression to test data aquisition
c<-m[1,1]
}
closeAllConnections()
RAM:
in the image above, you may find that the memory increases a lot until foreach
ends and it is freed.
I think the solution to the problem can be seen from the post of Steve Weston, the author of the foreach
package, here. There he states:
The doParallel package will auto-export variables to the workers that are referenced in the foreach loop.
So I think the problem is that in your code your big matrix c
is referenced in the assignment c<-m[1,1]
. Just try xyz <- m[1,1]
instead and see what happens.
Here is an example with a file-backed big.matrix
:
#create a matrix of size 1GB aproximatelly
n <- 10000
m <- 10000
c <- matrix(runif(n*m),n,m)
#convert it to bigmatrix
x <- as.big.matrix(x = c, type = "double",
separated = FALSE,
backingfile = "example.bin",
descriptorfile = "example.desc")
# get a description of the matrix
mdesc <- describe(x)
# Create the required connections
cl <- makeCluster(detectCores ())
registerDoSNOW(cl)
## 1) No referencing
out <- foreach(linID = 1:4, .combine=c) %dopar% {
t <- attach.big.matrix("example.desc")
for (i in seq_len(30L)) {
for (j in seq_len(m)) {
y <- t[i,j]
}
}
return(0L)
}
## 2) Referencing
out <- foreach(linID = 1:4, .combine=c) %dopar% {
invisible(c) ## c is referenced and thus exported to workers
t <- attach.big.matrix("example.desc")
for (i in seq_len(30L)) {
for (j in seq_len(m)) {
y <- t[i,j]
}
}
return(0L)
}
closeAllConnections()