executing multiple functions in background simultaneously

[brooklineTom]

> The disadvantage of threads in Python (CPython, actually) is that
> there's the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock), so you won't get any speed
> advantage if the threads are mostly processor-bound.

On a single processor machine with compute-bound threads, I don't the
GIL is the bottleneck. No matter how you slice it, there's still only
one CPU.

It might be interesting to see what it takes to make CPython do
something useful with multicore machines, perhaps using approaches
similar to that offered by Cilk Arts (http://www.cilk.com).