worker-number: Environment control of worker number

In Bioconductor/BiocParallel: Bioconductor facilities for parallel evaluation

Environment control of worker number

Description

Environment variables, global options, and aspects of the computing environment controlling default and maximum worker number.

Details

By default, BiocParallel Param objects use almost all (parallel::detectCores() - 2) available cores as workers. Several variables can determine alternative default number of workers. Elements earlier in the description below override elements later in the description.

_R_CHECK_LIMIT_CORES_:

Environment variable defined in base R, described in the 'R Internals' manual (RShowDoc("R-ints")). If defined and not equal to "false" or "FALSE", default to 2 workers.

IS_BIOC_BUILD_MACHINE:

Environment variable used by the Bioconductor build system; when defined, default to 4 workers.

getOption("mc.cores"):

Global R option (initialized from the environment variable MC_CORES) with non-negative integer number of workers, also recognized by the base R 'parallel' package.

BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX:

Environment variable, non-negative integer number of workers. Use this to set both the default and maximum worker number to a single value.

BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_NUMBER:

Environment variable, non-negative integer number of workers. Use this to set a default worker number without specifying BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX, or to set a default number of workers less than the maximum number.

R_PARALLELLY_AVAILABLECORES_FALLBACK:

Environment variable, non-negative integer number of workers, also recognized by the 'parallelly' family of packages.

A subset of environment variables and other aspects of the computing environment also enforce limits on worker number. Usually, a request for more than the maximum number of workers results in a warning message and creation of a 'Param' object with the maximum rather than requested number of workers.

_R_CHECK_LIMIT_CORES_:

Environment variable defined in base R. "warn" limits the number of workers to 2, with a warning; "false", or "FALSE" does not limit worker number; any other value generates an error.

IS_BIOC_BUILD_MACHINE:

Environment variable used by the Bioconductor build system. When set, limit the number of workers to 4.

BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX:

Environment variable, non-negative integer.

Number of available connections:

R has an internal limit (126) on the number of connections open at any time. 'SnowParam()' and 'MulticoreParam()' use 1 connection per worker, and so are limited by the number of available connections.

Examples

## set up example
original_worker_max <- Sys.getenv("BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX", NA_integer_)
original_worker_n <- Sys.getenv("BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_NUMBER", NA_integer_)
Sys.setenv(BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX = 4)
Sys.setenv(BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_NUMBER = 2)

bpnworkers(SnowParam())  # 2
bpnworkers(SnowParam(4)) # OK
bpnworkers(SnowParam(5)) # warning; set to 4

## clean up
Sys.unsetenv("BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX")
if (!is.na(original_worker_max))
    Sys.setenv(BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_MAX = original_worker_max)
Sys.unsetenv("BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_NUMBER")
if (!is.na(original_worker_n))
    Sys.setenv(BIOCPARALLEL_WORKER_NUMBER = original_worker_n)

Bioconductor/BiocParallel documentation built on March 7, 2024, 5:35 a.m.