Python un-plugging the Interpreter

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> 
>> A long time ago Greg Stein produced a patch that removed the need for
>> the GIL, but nobody seemed to want to pay the penalty it extracted in
>> speed reduction, so it languished unadopted.
> 
> Perhaps the current wave of dual-core and quad-core CPUs in cheap
> consumer products would change people's perceptions -- I wonder...

It would be nice to see the GIL banished, but the impression I get from 
my (limited) acquaintance with the Python 3.0 world leads me to believe 
that its banishment is *not* being treated as a priority.

I can understand that it would be a major engineering effort, but I 
should have thought the returns on multi-core architectures would have 
been worth considering.

It's going to be interesting to see whether perceptions in the CPython 
world change as PyPy and IronPython progress.

regards
  Steve
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