[Python-Dev] GIL, Python 3, and MP vs. UP

[Michael Hudson]

Martin Blais <blais at furius.ca> writes:

> On 9/18/05, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> On 9/17/05, John J Lee <jjl at pobox.com> wrote:
>> > c. Since time is needed to iron out bugs (and perhaps also to reimplememt
>> >    some pieces of code "from scratch"), very early in the life of Python 3
>> >    seems like the least-worst time to begin work on such a change.
>> >
>> > I realize that not all algorithms (nor all computational problems) scale
>> > well to MP hardware.  Is it feasible to usefully compile both MP and a UP
>> > binaries from one Python source code base?
>> 
>> That's an understatement. I expect that *most* problems (even most
>> problems that we will be programming 10-20 years from now) get little
>> benefit out of MP.
>
> Some are saying it won't be a matter of choice if we want to get the
> software to run faster (you know, that "MORE MORE MORE!" thing we all
> seem to suffer from):

People have been saying this for _years_, and it hasn't happened yet.
This time around it's a bit more convincing, but I reserve the right
to remain a touch skeptical.

> http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm
> The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software
> Herb Sutter
> March 2005

I was disappointed that that article (hey, it was the only issue of
ddj I've ever actually bought! :) didn't consider any concurrency
models other than shared memory threading.

Cheers,
mwh

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