Python advocacy in scientific computation

[Tim Hochberg]

Magnus Lycka wrote:
> Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
[SNIP]
> 
>>	For CPU-bound number-crunching, perhaps... For I/O-bound jobs, the
>>GIL is(should be) released when ever a thread is blocked waiting for I/O
>>to complete.
> 
> 
> I think CPU-bound number-crunching was the big deal in this case.
> Somehow, I doubt that the OP uses Matlab for I/O-bound jobs. At
> least if writing threaded applications becomes less error prone
> in competing languages, this might well be the weak point of Python
> in the future. I hope to see some clever solution to this from the
> Python developers.

I don't disagree with this, but it's largely irrelevant to CPU-bound 
number-crunching using numpy and its bretheren. In that case the bulk of 
the work is going on in the array extensions, in C, and thus the GIL 
should be released. Whether it actually is released, I can't say -- 
never having been blessed/cursed with a multiproccessing box, I haven't 
looked into it.

[SNIP]

-tim