[Python-Dev] The endless GIL debate: why not remove thread support instead? (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Sat Dec 13 23:47:27 CET 2008

If I remember correctly (when threading was invented in the mid-1980s) threads were originally described as "lightweight processes".

According to

http://www.serpentine.com/blog/threads-faq/the-history-of-threads/

that's when threads where reinvented. They were originally invented in 1965, on Multics (1970) they were used to perform compilation in the background. When Unix came along, it added address space separation, introducing what is now known as processes.

The perceived advantage at the time was the ability to have multiple threads of control with shared memory: this was much faster than the available inter-process communication mechanisms. On a single-processor computer synchronization was much less of a problem.

Historically, it was vice versa. First there were threads/processes/tasks with shared variables, semaphores, etc, and later address space separation was added.

Regards, Martin

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