[Python-Dev] GIL removal question

[Nick Coghlan]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 9:32 PM, David Beazley <dave at dabeaz.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 2011, at 6:15 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> PyPy would actually make a significantly better basis for this kind of
>> experimentation, since they *don't* use reference counting for their
>> memory management.
>
> That's an experiment that would pretty interesting.  I think the real question would boil down to what *else* do they have to lock to make everything work.   Reference counting is a huge bottleneck for CPython to be sure, but it's definitely not the only issue that has to be addressed in making a free-threaded Python.
>

Yeah, the problem reduces back to the 4 steps in the original post.
Still not trivial, since there's quite a bit of internal interpreter
state to protect, but significantly more feasible than dealing with
CPython's reference counting. However, you do get additional
complexities like the JIT compiler coming into play, so it is really a
question that would need to be raised directly with the PyPy dev team.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia