[Python-Dev] Lazily GC tracking tuples

[Kevin Jacobs]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Tim Peters wrote:
> [Kevin Jacobs, on Neil's tuple-untracking patch]
> > Sorry, I wasn't very clear here.  The patch _does_ fix the performance
> > problem by untracking cycle-less tuples when we use the naive version of
> > our code (i.e., the one that does not play with the garbage collector).
> > However, the performance of the patched GC when compared to our GC-tuned
> > code is very similar.
> 
> Then Neil's patch is doing all that we could wish of it in this case (you
> seem to have counted it as a strike against the patch that it didn't do
> better than you can by turning off gc by hand, but that's unrealistic if
> so), and then some:

I didn't count it as a strike against the patch -- I had just hoped that
untracking tuples would result in faster execution than turning GC off and
letting my heap swell obscenely.  One extreme case could happend if I turn
off GC, run my code, and let it fill all of my real memory with tuples, and
start swapping to disk.  Clearly, keeping GC enabled with the tuple
untracking patch would result in huge performance gains.  This is not the
situation I was dealing with, though I was hoping for a relatively smaller
improvement from having a more compact and (hopefully) less fragmented heap.

-Kevin

--
Kevin Jacobs
The OPAL Group - Enterprise Systems Architect
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