???? Hardware-accellerated python ????

[Steven Adams]

what about using FPGA's? Taht would alleviate some of the production time
lag between design and time to market - with the benefit that as newer,
faster designs came out you could 'refit' your 'processor' in the machine.

DISCLAIMER: I only know a little about FPGA's (i.e. they exist and general
idea of their use).

would this work?

Steven

"Alex Martelli" <alex at magenta.com> wrote in message
news:8mr44b01d1s at news2.newsguy.com...
> "Armin Steinhoff" <Armin at Steinhoff_de> wrote in message
> news:8mr18c$12s9 at drn.newsguy.com...
> > In article <DW4k5.118428$1h3.1883630 at news20.bellglobal.com>, "Olivier
> says...
> > >
> > >If the dictionary lookups are hash-based, there isn't very much
> improvement
> > >to be done, as hash tables are usually O(1).  I'd say the best
> accelerator
> > >for Python is RAM.  You can buy more RAM (at your local computer
hardware
> > >store) and add it to your computer and EVERYTHING will go faster!
> > >
> > >The nature of an interpreted language (and many other features of
python)
> > >makes it hard to put it on a chip (or to compile).  At least, that's
how
> I
> > >understand it.  Maybe I'm wrong?
> >
> > You are wrong ... tokens processed as machine code ist just faster.
>
> It's a bit more complex than you make it out, Armin.  A general-purpose
CPU
> (like other similarly general-purpose pieces of hardware -- RAM, caches,
&c)
> has a huge market: it can amortize huge investments in technology and
design
> to shrink it down to the best that's technologically feasible at any given
> time.
>
> A special-purpose CPU designed/built to similar economic constraints
cannot
> hope to match the design-rules/process-learning-curve/etc of the general
> purpose component.  So the "ist just faster" need not apply -- more often
> than
> a naive intuition would expect, the solution relying on general-purpose
tech
> is going to beat or leapfrog the one relying on special-purpose hardware.
>
> E.g., one may be able, starting a special-purpose hardware design project
> when the fastest general-purpose CPU on the mass-market runs at 133MHz,
> to produce a special-purpose CPU that (for that single specific task only)
> is
> twice as fast... but when it comes out on the market, the general-purpose
> CPU's have leap-frogged to 300MHz, and so easily beat the special-purpose
> one (that's equivalent to a 266-MHz general-purpose one).  And the special
> purpose project just doesn't have a wide-enough market to finance enormous
> continuing investments to try to catch up with mainstream technology.
>
> You need a *huge* 'leverage' factor to defeat this Moore-curve effect; or
a
> "niche" for your special-purpose hardware that is actually pretty large
> (video
> & advanced-graphics processing, maybe). Most of the time, neither applies.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>