Why GIL? (was Re: what's the point of rpython?)

[Paul Rubin]

Bryan Olson <fakeaddress at nowhere.org> writes:
> An object's __dict__ slot is *not* mutable; thus we could gain some
> efficiency by protecting the object and its dict with the same lock. I
> do not see a major win in Mr. Banks' point that we do not need to lock
> the object, just its dict.

If the dict contents don't change often, maybe we could use an
STM-like approach to eliminate locks when reading.  That would of
course require rework to just about every C function that accesses
Python objects.