As mruts pointed out above, kdb+/q provides what you're imagining - it provides fantastic distributed computing support via its IPC protocol and also has multi-core support.
There is a free 64-bit version available with limits that don't seem harsh at all:
The 64-bit kdb+ On-Demand Personal Edition is free for personal, non-commercial use. Currently it may be used on up to 2 computers, and up to a maximum of 16 cores per computer, but is not licensed for use on any cloud – only personal computers. It requires an always-on internet connection to operate, and a license key file, obtainable from ondemand.kx.com
You can start the 32 bit instance with the -s switch (for q to be started with multiple slaves) for parallel execution of a function over data using the "peach" command [0].
But yes, I do agree that the 32 bit instances have limited use, as they can't be used in for-profit projects.