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List:       python-dev
Subject:    Re: [Python-Dev] Thoughts fresh after EuroPython
From:       Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-07-26 10:56:25
Message-ID: AANLkTimyrVdt5-mEbim5Wzw9LN+xes+T4H88et4ej9Bn () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Michael Foord
<fuzzyman@voidspace.org.uk> wrote:
> On 26/07/2010 04:42, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Peter Portante
>> <peter.a.portante@gmail.com>   wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> FWIW: We use Python at Tabblo, straddled across Python 2.5.4 and 2.6.5.
>>> They
>>> work. And they work well. But we make light use of threads (mostly
>>> background I/O handling), and heavy use of multiple processes because we
>>> can't take advantage of our multi-core systems otherwise.
>>>
>>
>> Isn't this an indication that the GIL is, in fact, not (much of) a
>> problem?
>>
>> I wish those trying to get rid of the GIL well. But it may not be the
>> panacea some folks are hoping for. Multi-threaded programming remains
>> hard (and removing the GIL might actually make it harder).
>>
>> Jython and IronPython don't have a GIL, and I think PyPy may not
>> either. Does anyone have experience with GIL-free programming in one
>> of those?
>>
>>
>
> Oh, and PyPy does have a GIL but the developers say it wouldn't be a huge
> amount of work to remove it.

It wouldn't be as huge as on CPython, since we don't have reference
counting, but it's still *a lot* of work and someone would have to
step and take this task (since none core pypy dev is that interested
in that).

>
> Presumably they would have to add locking in the right places - which would
> then impact performance. As PyPy doesn't use reference counting adding
> locking shouldn't impact performance as much as previous attempts with
> CPython have.

That's one thing but the other thing is that JIT can remove a lot of
locks (like it does no JVM), but that's yet another batch of work to
be done.

Cheers,
fijal
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