[Python-Dev] Removing the GIL (Me, not you!) (original) (raw)

Justin Tulloss jmtulloss at gmail.com
Thu Sep 13 20:45:09 CEST 2007

On 9/13/07, Adam Olsen <rhamph at gmail.com> wrote:

Basically though, atomic incref/decref won't work. Once you've got two threads modifying the same location the costs skyrocket. Even without being properly atomic you'll get the same slowdown on x86 (who's cache coherency is fairly strict.)

I'm a bit skeptical of the actual costs of atomic incref. For there to be contention, you would need to have to be modifying the same memory location at the exact same time. That seems unlikely to ever happen. We can't bank on it never happening, but an occasionally expensive operation is ok. After all, it's occasional.

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