[Python-Dev] Python 3 optimizations continued...

[Nick Coghlan]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> wrote:
> Some in this thread seemed to give the impression that CPython performance
> is not something to care about. I disagree. I see CPython being the main
> implementation of Python used in most places for a long time. Improving its
> performance merely raises the bar to be met by other implementations if they
> want to compete. That is a good thing!

Not the impression I intended to give. I merely want to highlight that
we need to be careful that incremental increases in complexity are
justified with real, measured performance improvements. PyPy has set
the bar on how to do that - people that seriously want to make CPython
faster need to focus on getting speed.python.org sorted *first* (so we
know where we're starting) and *then* work on trying to improve
CPython's numbers relative to that starting point.

The PSF has the hardware to run the site, but, unless more has been
going in the background than I am aware of, is still lacking trusted
volunteers to do the following:
1. Getting codespeed up and running on the PSF hardware
2. Hooking it in to the CPython source control infrastructure
3. Getting a reasonable set of benchmarks running on 3.x (likely
starting with the already ported set in Mercurial, but eventually we
want the full suite that PyPy uses)
4. Once PyPy, Jython and IronPython offer 3.x compatible versions,
start including them as well (alternatively, offer 2.x performance
comparisons as well, although that's less interesting from a CPython
point of view since it can't be used to guide future CPython
optimisation efforts)

Anecdotal, non-reproducible performance figures are *not* the way to
go about serious optimisation efforts. Using a dedicated machine is
vulnerable to architecture-specific idiosyncracies, but ad hoc testing
on other systems can still be used as a sanity check.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia