HOPE: A Python just-in-time compiler for astrophysical computations

[Michael Torrie]

On 06/23/2015 10:53 AM, Laurent Pointal wrote:
> Mark Lawrence wrote:
> 
>> Another beasty I've just stumbled across which you may find interesting
>> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213133714000687
>  
> Why use a JIT complation when you could use some C++ generation then 
> compilation as Python module, like with Pythran ?
> 
> https://github.com/serge-sans-paille/pythran
> 
> For heavy computing, you may loose some time before running computation, to 
> have (generate) the right tool, then do the job with real bonus.

Not really. I suspect Hope caches the compiled subroutine so only the
very first running of the function on the very first execution of the
pthon program will be slow.  After that, the program will run quickly
each time.  It's a pretty good idea.

I've never heard of pythran; I'll have to check it out and see how it
compares to the ever-growing crop of Python dialect compilers.  Cython
could be used in a similar way as you suggest, and in PyPy we have the
RPython dialect that compiles to C.