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 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 makeClusterPSOCK(), which is backward compatible with parallel::makePSOCKcluster() 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.