Will Python 3.0 remove the global interpreter lock (GIL)

king kikapu aboudouvas at panafonet.gr
Mon Sep 3 06:19:52 EDT 2007


I was wondering (and maybe i still do) about this GIL "problem". I am
relatively new to Python (less than a year) and when i started to
think about it i said: "Oh, this IS a problem". But when i dig a
little more, i found that "Ah, maybe it isn't".
I strongly believe that the best usage of multiple cores processor
will be achieved if programming languages are modified to support this
on their "hearts". Code blocks that would be identified by the
compiler and run in parallel and such things. Laboratories are working
on these stuff but i do not expect something in the very-near future.

So, as i mentioned above, there are solutions for that right now
("parallel python" and others) that enabled us with little effort to
spawn a new python interpreter, thus allowing the OS to schedule it on
a different core and do the job this way relatively cheap.
I wouldn't recommend going to IronPython despite the fact that the CLR
better utilize MP. The reason for this is that i would NEVER give up
the freedom that CPython gives me by exchange "better" usage of the MP
and platform lock-in.




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