Download and Install the GPU-Enabled Backend

Downloads a prebuilt GPU-enabled rfastlowess shared library for the current platform from the matching GitHub Release. On Windows, installs a versioned sidecar alongside the CPU library and activates its native routines when the package is loaded after restarting R. Other platforms atomically replace the CPU library. GPU support is opt-in and not included in CRAN/Bioconductor releases.

A running R session cannot swap an already-loaded shared library, so restart R after installing for the change to take effect.

Downloads are checked against GitHub's published SHA-256 digest before execution. Native probes have a 30-second timeout and require matching package-version/ABI contracts and registered argument counts. Older GPU artifacts without this contract must be rebuilt. On Windows, invalid sidecars are skipped and activated DLLs remain mapped until R exits to protect live model finalizers. Probing is not a security sandbox; local native libraries must be trusted.

Usage

install_gpu(yes = FALSE, local_path = NULL)

Arguments

yes

Logical; skip the interactive y/N confirmation prompt. Must be TRUE when the session is not interactive.

local_path

Character; path to a GPU-enabled shared library already built locally (e.g. via WITH_GPU=1 make install in benchmarks/). When given, skips the GitHub Release lookup/download and installs directly from this path — useful for testing the installer itself, or installing an unreleased build.

Value

Invisibly, TRUE if a GPU-enabled library is available at the printed path (already active, or freshly installed); FALSE if the user aborted.

See also

gpu_available to check the current status.

Examples

# Check whether the GPU backend is already active before installing it
gpu_available()
#> [1] FALSE
if (interactive()) {
    install_gpu()
}