[Rsiena-help] RSiena on a computer cluster

[Tobias Stark]

Dear RSiena developers,

I hope to increase the speed of my analyses using a computer cluster. I ran the exact same test analysis with a large network (approx. 1,000 nodes) and varied the number of cores on which SIENA could run. I noticed that there was hardly any gain in speed using more cores. In fact, the analysis took longer when I ran it on 8 cores instead of 4 cores (no matter if the cores where on one machine or distributed across the cluster). The analyses where considerably faster on 16 cores but using 26 or even 32 cores did not result in quicker results

I wonder if there is a restriction within SIENA that prevents additional gains in speed with more cores or if the problem lies with the communication between machines in the computer cluster. Do you have a hint for me?

Thanks,
Tobias