Python's Performance

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:47:35 -0700, Paul Boddie wrote:

>> The difficulty is that the target architecture in not realized in hardware.
> 
> Or isn't perhaps feasible/viable for hardware realisation: one of the
> EuroPython speakers dangled the promise of hardware support for
> high-level languages (the classic "Python on a chip" concept), but
> there are probably plenty of areas where hardware support can assist
> software virtual machines without going to all the trouble of
> implementing such virtual machines in hardware completely.

I remember back in the mid 1980s, Apple and Texas Instruments collaborated
to build a hybrid dual-processor machine. It had a standard Motorola
68000 CPU like the Macintosh, plus a custom TI processor that executed
Lisp code in hardware. I'm told that the reason they never sold was that
the Lisp machine was considerably slower than the software Lisp solution
of the time.

On the other hand, there were Forth enthusiasts who hacked their
Macintoshes with Forth chips, and they went like a rocket.

-- 
Steven.