Versions of ASReml-R and standalone prior to version 4.2 were not able to take advantage of parallel processing, except in a few areas.
ASReml-R 4.2 and ASReml 4.2 standalone can both use parallel processing on multi-core machines. Parallel processing divides analyses into smaller parts that can be run simultaneously, resulting in much faster results. The optimization for multi-threaded processing means that ASReml 4.2 can take advantage of up to 16 threads, which can make a significant difference in processing speed.
In one example, an 18,144 record MET trial that took over 21 hours to process in ASReml 4.1, was processed in 2.9 hours in ASReml 4.2. This same analysis was able to be completed in only 26 minutes using 8-thread multiprocessing.