[Python-Dev] Python is faster than C (original) (raw)

Armin Rigo arigo at tunes.org
Tue Apr 6 10:33:56 EDT 2004

Hello Dave,

On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 09:06:16AM +1000, Dave Cole wrote:

Would it make sense to build specialisation into the base Python interpreter so that it builds specialised versions of bytecode for functions. I am assuming that there are only a few types that can be targeted by specialisation (int, float). Bytecodes then could be added to the interpreter which operate on those native machine types rather than the Python objects.

This is a kind of project that would give a good speed-up with limited changes in the Python interpreter, though it is still relatively involved. Whether someone shows up to actually implement and maintain it is another matter.
Moreover there are a few dark spots that are easily overlooked; for example, any operation between ints could actually return a long. Psyco itself is very different and copes well with this problem (and can do more than only easy-typed locals).

A bientot,

Armin.

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