This package provides 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.