Python's Performance

[Mike Meyer]

Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> writes:
> I agree that there are many shades of grey here, but there's also a
> real black that's sharply distinct and easy to find -- real native
> code binaries are not interpreted.

Except when they are. Many machines are microcoded, which means your
"real native code binary" is interpreted by a microcode program stored
in the control store. Most machines don't have a writeable control
store (WCS), so you generally can't change the interpreter, but that's
not always true. In the simple case, a WCS lets the vendor fix
"hardware" bugs by providing a new version of the microcode. In the
extreme cases, you get OS's in which the control store is part of the
process state, so different processes can have radically different
formats for their "native code binaries".

Then there's the Nanodata QM-1, whose microcode was interpreted by
"nanocode".

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.