On Tue, 20 Oct 2020 at 14:01, Mark Shannon <mark@hotpy.org> wrote:
Hi everyone,
CPython is slow. We all know that, yet little is done to fix it.
I'd like to change that. I have a plan to speed up CPython by a factor of five over the next few years. But it needs funding.
I am aware that there have been several promised speed ups in the past that have failed. You might wonder why this is different.
Here are three reasons: 1. I already have working code for the first stage. 2. I'm not promising a silver bullet. I recognize that this is a substantial amount of work and needs funding. 3. I have extensive experience in VM implementation, not to mention a PhD in the subject.
My ideas for possible funding, as well as the actual plan of development, can be found here:
https://github.com/markshannon/faster-cpython
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
A very blunt (apologies if it's too blunt) restatement of this proposal (at least stage 1) seems to me to be "Give me $250k, and donate $250k to the PSF for ongoing support, and I'll let you have code that I've already written that gives CPython a 50% speedup. If my code doesn't deliver a 50% speedup, I'll give the money back. No money, no code. We can also discuss 3 more incremental steps of the same sort of magnitude, but I don't have code already written for them". Honestly, if someone's able to get together $500k, that sounds like a fairly good deal (no risk). If you're asking for a commitment to the full $2M, even if stages 2-4 are contingent on delivery, that's a bit of a harder ask (because the cashflow implication of committing that sort of money becomes relevant). But maybe someone can do it. I'm fine with this, I guess. I don't have $500k to offer myself, so all my agreement is worth is that I don't have a problem with this much work being funded/provided via one big donation. I assume that part of "delivery" would involve code review, etc. - we wouldn't be bypassing normal development workflow. So there's still work to be done in putting the code through review, responding to review comments, etc, and ensuring that the code is delivered in a form that the core devs are happy to maintain (PSF donation for support notwithstanding). Actually, a chunk of that support allocation to the PSF might be needed to pay for reviewers, if (as I suspect) this is a large and complex PR. What I don't see is where the money's coming from. It's fine to ask, but will anyone come up with that sort of funding? Paul