Parallel Computing for Data Science

10.6. SOME TIMING COMPARISONS 229

which returns true if x > y. Due to the way Thrust’s sort function is

set up, this amounts to specifying a descending-order sort. But we could

set up a custom sort, with our own comparison function tailored to our

application.

The fact that Rcpp and Thrust are both modeled after C++ STL makes

them rather similar to each other; learn one, and then learning the other is

much easier. Thus statements such as

t h r u s t : : copy ( dx . begin () , dx . end ( ) , xb . begin ( ) ) ;

are straightforward.

10.6 Some Timing Comparisons

Here we compare R’s built-in serial sort(), our multicore implementation

of Bucket Sort, and Rth ...