Dennis Allison wrote:
How about re-engineering the interpreter to make it more MP friendly? (This is probably a bigger task than a Masters thesis.) The current interpreter serializes on the global interpreter lock (GIL) and blocks everything. Is there another approach which would allow processing to continue? Guido said once that there was an attempt to change the granularity of the locking, but that it quickly became overly complex and unstable. Perhaps some of Maurice Herlihy's ideas may be adapted to the problem. Moreover, it may not be necessary that the interpreter state be consistent and deterministic all the time as long as it eventually produces the same answer as a deterministic equivalent. There may be interpreter organizations which move forward optimistically, ignoring potential locking problems and then (if necessary) recoveri, and these may have better performance than the more conservative ones. Or they may not. Some kind of performance tests and evaluations would need to be part of any such study.
As you said, Dennis, this might be too big for a masters thesis. But it definitely would be nice to have solved. I will definitely think about it. -Brett