[Python-Dev] About dictionary lookup caching

[Andrea Griffini]

I'm experimenting with a patch for dictionary lookup caching, the
main idea being avoiding the lookup of a constant (co_names) in
a dictionary if the dictionary didn't change since last lookup.

Currently the cache is held in a structure that is parallel to
co_names (the LOAD_GLOBAL opcode uses oparg to access
the cache slot) and this is wasteful if there are co_names entries
that are not used for global lookups.

Probably I could act at the code object creation time to
sort names so that ones used by LOAD_GLOBAL are
at the beginning of co_names but this would require inspecting
and hacking the already generated opcode.
Another case that would IMO be worth optimizing is the
LOAD_ATTR lookup when it's done after a LOAD_GLOBAL
(I suspect that in many cases the element being searched will
be a module so caching would be simple to implement; for
general objects things are way more complex and I see no
simple solution for caching dictionary lookups).

My opinion is that it would be by far better to do this ordering
of co_names at compile time but I've no idea where to look
for trying to make such a change.

Can someone please point me in the right direction ?

Andrea