Where should you use bigmemory?
The bigmemory
package is useful when your data are represented as a dense, numeric matrix and you can store an entire data set on your hard drive. It is also compatible with optimized, low-level linear algebra libraries written in C, like Intel's Math Kernel Library. So, you can use bigmemory
directly in your C and C++ programs for better performance.
If your data isn't numeric - if you have string variables - or if you need a greater range of numeric types - like 8-bit integers - then you might consider trying the ff
package. It is similar to bigmemory but includes a structure similar to a data.frame
.
Where should you use bigmemory?
This exercise is part of the course
Scalable Data Processing in R
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