[Python-Dev] 3.1 performance

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Victor Stinner
<victor.stinner at haypocalc.com> wrote:
> I just downloaded Python 2.6.1, 3.0.1 and 3.1alpha1, compiled them on 32 and
> 64 bits CPU, and ran pybench 2.1(*).
>
> Summary (minimum total) on 32 bits CPU:
>  * Python 2.6.1: 8762 ms
>  * Python 3.0.1: 8977 ms
>  * Python 3.1a1: 9228 ms (slower than 3.0)
>
> Summary (minimum total) on 64 bits CPU:
>  * Python 2.6.1: 4219 ms
>  * Python 3.0.1: 4502 ms
>  * Python 3.1a1: 4442 ms (faster than 3.0)
>
> I also ran pybench once, is it enough? See attached files for the details.
>
> (*) I copied pybench 2.1 from Pthon 3.1alpha1 because 2.6.1 only
>    includes pybench 2.0

How are these numbers significant? IIUC that is not at all how pybench
is supposed to be used. Its strength is that it lets you watch the
relative performance of many individual operations. I don't think
adding up the numbers for all operations gives a very useful total,
since each individual timing loop seems to be scaled to last around
50-100 msec; this means the operation mix is probably vastly different
from that occurring in real operations.

What I'd be interested in however would be a list of which operations
got speeded up the most and which slowed down the most. That might
stir up someone's memory of a change that was made in that operations
that could explain the performance change (especially for slow-downs,
of course :-).

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)