[pypy-dev] pypy-stm and lock-free data structures

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Andrew,

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Andrew Francis <andrewfr_ice at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 1) Would I be using the pypy-stm branch? (because there is no GIL)
> 2) Would I write some of this in RPython? (I am assuming yes)

The pypy-stm branch has no GIL in the implementation, but its behavior
is equivalent to the GIL.  I can't answer your questions without
knowing exactly what you're planning.  Sorry if I forgot, I know you
mentioned it several times here.  I still have a hard time figuring
out the real goal, rather than implementation details.  For example,
"I want to implement what is described in paper X about language Y" is
often unrelated to "can I use pypy-stm's GIL approach".

> 3) Do I have access to low-level atomic operations (I don't think the
> high-level transaction module gives me access)?

rpython.rlib.atomic_ops.  Note however that the core of pypy-stm is
directly implemented in C, not in RPython.

> 4) Does stackless features work with pypy-stm (I haven't yet been successful
> in compiling a pypy-stm branch so I can't test this out myself).

I guess not right now, but that should be easy if someone cares.


A bientôt,

Armin.