Python un-plugging the Interpreter

[Steve Holden]

Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:56:25 -0600, S.Mohideen <moin at blackhole.labs.rootshell.ws> wrote:
[...]
> 
>>  4) Acheive true parallelism and performance by getting rid of the 
>> middle-man Interpreter and GIL.
> 
> Is the GIL really an artifact of the interpreter?
> 
In so far as only the CPython interpreter has one, I'd have to say "yes" 
to this. It's used to make various operations trivially thread-safe, 
which allows large speed gains in the programming.

A long time ago Greg Stein produced a patch that removed the need for 
the GIL, but nobody seemed to want to pay the penalty it extracted in 
speed reduction, so it languished unadopted.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd          http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb     http://del.icio.us/steve.holden
Recent Ramblings       http://holdenweb.blogspot.com