SIMD powered Python

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

In <1182607699.214626.85230 at u2g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, Bytter wrote:

> Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch escreveu:
>> In <1182554657.444684.268050 at i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, Bytter wrote:
>>
>> > Is there any I&D ongoing about using SIMD [1] instructions, like SSE
>> > [2], to speed up Python, especially regarding functional features,
>> > like list comprehension, map and reduce, etc.. ?
>>
>> SIMD instruction sets know about "low level" data types, Python is about
>> objects.  `map()`, `reduce()`, list comprehension work on arbitrary
>> iterables so how do you expect SIMD instructions handle this?  Even simple
>> lists contain objects and those don't have to be of the same type.
>
> True... But maybe in NumPy arrays that would be more feasible...?

Yes but that's in external libraries and not in the Python interpreter.
So it won't speed up Python code like list comprehensions but "just" calls
to external functions written in C, Fortran or assembler if those make use
of SIMD instructions.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch