[Python-Dev] GIL, Python 3, and MP vs. UP (was Re: Variant of removing GIL.) (original) (raw)

Martin Blais blais at furius.ca
Mon Sep 19 18:28:50 CEST 2005

On 9/18/05, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

On 9/17/05, John J Lee <jjl at pobox.com> wrote: > c. Since time is needed to iron out bugs (and perhaps also to reimplememt > some pieces of code "from scratch"), very early in the life of Python 3 > seems like the least-worst time to begin work on such a change. > > I realize that not all algorithms (nor all computational problems) scale > well to MP hardware. Is it feasible to usefully compile both MP and a UP > binaries from one Python source code base?

That's an understatement. I expect that most problems (even most problems that we will be programming 10-20 years from now) get little benefit out of MP.

Some are saying it won't be a matter of choice if we want to get the software to run faster (you know, that "MORE MORE MORE!" thing we all seem to suffer from):

http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software Herb Sutter March 2005

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