can multi-core improve single funciton?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-02-20, Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com> wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano  <steven at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>
>> As I understand it, there's very little benefit to multi-cores
>> in Python due to the GIL. 
>
> As phrased, your statement is completely wrong.  Here's a more
> correct phrasing: "For threaded compute-bound applications
> written in pure Python, there's very little benefit to
> multiple cores." But threaded I/O-bound applications do
> receive some benefit from multiple cores, and using multiple
> processes certainly leverages multiple cores.  If boosting the
> performance of a threaded compute-bound application is
> important, one can always write the critical parts in C/C++.

Do the crunchy bits of scipy/numpy, scientific python, vtk and
other compute-intensive libraries tend to release the GIL while
they're busy "computing"?

[Perhaps using them doesn't count as "pure Python", but...]

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