This article provides a summary of a selection of some of the high-performance parallel packages (libraries) available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) using the statistical software R. These packages can utilize multicore systems often found in modern personal computers as well as computer cluster or grid computing in order to provide linear speed up the computations in many of advanced statistical modern applications. Some illustrative R parallel codes are given in order to introduce the reader to some basic ideas about parallel programming in R packages.

R, high performance computing, network of workstations, message passing interface, parallel computing, computer cluster, grid computing, multicore systems