[Python-Dev] Variant of removing GIL.

[Luis P Caamano]

On 9/17/05, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> At 12:32 PM 9/17/2005 -0400, Luis P Caamano wrote:
> >My point is that not yielding speedups on multiprocessors
> >and hurting performance on uniprocessors is not a good
> >or valid reason to drop free-threading.
> 
> It is 

No, it's not because it's not true.  

> if you have only volunteers to maintain the code base, and the
> changes significantly increase maintenance complexity.  

This is one very valid reason.

> Also, a significant
> number of third-party C extensions would need to be modified for
> compatibility, as has already been pointed out.

And another.

> 
> Note also that Jython and IronPython exist, and run on VMs that address
> these issues, and that the PyPy project can generate code for many kinds of
> backends.  There's nothting stopping anybody from creating a
> multiprocessor-friendly backend for PyPy, for example.

Yes, eventually when we have CPython running on more SMP
or equivalent machines than UP machines, the majority will
have an itch and it will get scratched.

-- 
Luis P Caamano
Atlanta, GA USA