Probably, but why not take this as a chance to improve other
aspects of the CPython VM as well ?

Here's a presentation by Cesare Di Mauro, the author of the
patch:

http://wpython.googlecode.com/files/Beyond%20Bytecode%20-%20A%20Wordcode-based%20Python.pdf

--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

This presentation was made for wpython 1.0 alpha, which was the first release I made.

Last year I released the second (and last), wpython 1.1, which carries several other changes and optimizations. You can find the new project here: http://code.google.com/p/wpython2/ and the presentation here: http://wpython2.googlecode.com/files/Cleanup%20and%20new%20optimizations%20in%20WPython%201.1.pdf

Cesare