Azul has been using hardware transactional memory on their custom CPUs (and likely STM in their current x86 virtual machine based products) to great effect for their massively parallel Java VM (700+ cpu cores and gobs of ram) for over 4 years.  I&#39;ll leave it to the reader to do the relevant searching to read more on that.<div>

<br></div><div>My point is: This is up to any given Python VM implementation to take advantage of or not as it sees fit.  Shoe horning it into an existing VM may not make much sense but anyone is welcome to try.<br><br>-gps</div>