[Python-Dev] Python parallel benchmark (original) (raw)

Hrvoje Nikšić hrvoje.niksic at avl.com
Fri May 16 14:14:44 CEST 2008

On Fri, 2008-05-16 at 08:04 -0400, Tom Pinckney wrote:

Here's one example, albeit from a few years ago

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/numpy-discussion/1625465

Thanks for the pointer. I'm not sure I fully understand Konrad Hinsen's concerns, but maybe the problem is that Numpy's "number-crunching" needs to call back into Python frequently. The notion of "releasing the GIL for number-crunching" assumes that the code is structured like this:

  1. code that works with python objects ...
  2. acquire pointer to a C struct/array ...
  3. release GIL
  4. work with C objects ("crunch the numbers") without calling any Python code and without touching Python objects or refcounts
  5. reacquire GIL

If step 4 needs to call into Python frequently, then this strategy won't really work.

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list