fork()
Graham Matthews
graham at sloth.math.uga.edu
Thu Jun 10 11:12:44 EDT 1999
Tim Peters (tim_one at email.msn.com) wrote:
: Back at Python 1.4, a set of patches was developed (by Greg Stein) that
: *did* remove the global lock. This meant fine-grained locking of other
: stuff as needed, refcounts included. The interpreter has changed quite a
: bit since then, so old numbers aren't quantitatively relevant anymore; but
: it was indeed a significant slowdown for single-threaded Python programs.
:
: It's particularly acute for Python because *everything* "is boxed"; nothing
: is exempt, and refcounting is never delayed.
:
The Sisal language has an interesting approach to this problem. Rather
than try to lock each refcount, it had n areas of memory you could
allocate out of. When changing area i you had to lock it, but all users
of the other areas could proceed without blocking. This was useful
for do reference count fiddling.
grahaml
--
As you grow up and leave the playground
where you kissed your prince and found your frog
Remember the jester that showed you tears
the script for tears
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