On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 11:18:34 +0000 Mark Dickinson <dickinsm@gmail.com> wrote:
It looks as though the next step would be to run some integer-intensive benchmarks on 32-bit ARM, with both --enable-big-digits=15 and --enable-big-digits=30. If those show a win (or at least, not a significant loss) for 30-bit digits, then there's a case for at least making 30-bit digits the default, which would be a first step towards eventually dropping that support.
Note that ARM is merely an architecture with very diverse implementations having quite differing performance characteristics. If the concern is truly to have no performance regression, then tests on different CPU models would probably be required. Of course, we may also not be that concerned (do embedded platforms often rely on Python's bigint performance, for example?).
GPS: I'm not immediately seeing the ABI issue. If you're able to dig up more information on that, I'd be interested to see it.
We don't have an ABI (except the stable ABI which doesn't expose object internals), so this should be fine. Regards Antoine.