working with huge memory: single precision?

Hello,

I'm very new to R and don't know much about it yet. I would like
to develop R-programs that work with data of sizes of 10^10 - 10^11
data points. We have very-high-memory machines with ~256 GB, but it
would significantly help if I could store the data points in single
precision in RAM instead of double precision. Is that possible?

In the documentation I found a sentence saying its not supported,
at least not out of the box. But I am quite desperate and would also
consider working with an alpha version or with extension packages?

Ideally I would like type promotion to work, i.e. that when using
the data in math operations they should be promoted to double.

Any help is greatly appreciated! All the best,

    Mario

Mario Emmenlauer BioDataAnalysis             Mobil: +49-(0)151-68108489
Balanstrasse 43                    mailto: mario.emmenlauer * unibas.ch
D-81669 M?nchen                          http://www.marioemmenlauer.de/