New Python Runtime / Unladen Swallow

Nick Craig-Wood nick at craig-wood.com
Sat Mar 28 15:30:04 EDT 2009


Adonis <adonis_vargas at REMOVE_THIS_bellsouth.net> wrote:
>  Came across this article on Ars on a new LLVM (Low Level Virtual 
>  Machine) JIT compiler for Python being built by Google:
> 
>  http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/google-launches-project-to-boost-python-performance-by-5x.ars

Interesting article and site. The projct is called Unladen Swallow.
(I'd write a link but I can't copy and paste them on my phone!)

The idea seems to be to gradually transform python (2.6) into using
LLVM as its VM instead of the python VM it uses at the moment.

They've already managed to compile python into LLVM (there is a LLVM
version of gcc) and speed it up a bit.  The next step is to retarget the
python byte code generator into producing LLVM bytecode instead.

The advantage of targetting LLVM is that it is cross platform and
already has JIT and full compilers for many platforms.

They plan to fold their work back into CPython when done too.

Sounds like a project to keep an eye on!

>  Now the question is will this make Vista run faster?

Nothing could do that ;-)

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick



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