Parallel Python

[parallelpython at gmail.com]

> I always thought that if you use multiple processes (e.g. os.fork) then
> Python can take advantage of multiple processors. I think the GIL locks
> one processor only. The problem is that one interpreted can be run on
> one processor only. Am I not right? Is your ppm module runs the same
> interpreter on multiple processors? That would be very interesting, and
> something new.
>
>
> Or does it start multiple interpreters? Another way to do this is to
> start multiple processes and let them communicate through IPC or a local
> network.

   That's right. ppsmp starts multiple interpreters in separate
processes and organize communication between them through IPC.

   Originally ppsmp was designed to speedup an existent application
which is written in pure python but is quite computationally expensive
(the other ways to optimize it were used too). It was also required
that the application will run out of the box on the most standard Linux
distributions (they all contain CPython).