Utility functions that enhance the 'parallel' package and support the built-in parallel backends of the 'future' package. For example, availableCores() gives the number of CPU cores available to your R process as given by the operating system, 'cgroups' and Linux containers, R options, and environment variables, including those set by job schedulers on high-performance compute clusters. If none is set, it will fall back to parallel::detectCores(). Another example is 'parallel::makeCluster(type = "RPSOCK")', which is backward compatible with 'parallel::makeCluster()' while doing a better job in setting up remote cluster workers without the need for configuring the firewall to do port-forwarding to your local computer.