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Many people have played with removing the GIL over the years in python. The issue is not that it's impossible, but rather that it's impractical and slows down t
by jmtulloss 17y ago
Many people have played with removing the GIL over the years in python. The issue is not that it's impossible, but rather that it's impractical and slows down the single threaded case significantly. This article did not go into details about how C extensions manage the changes, or whether they're compatible at all. It also doesn't talk about performance penalties that may be incurred by synchronizing data structures. Until we have hard data on that, this can't be called a success.
That being said, the article didn't go into any detail at all. Perhaps these questions have been answered already. Either way, this is promising step for MacRuby.
- scott_s 17y agoThat's what I've heard about CPython's GIL, but no one has said why it slows down single threaded performance significantly. Do you happen to know? I understand that finer-grain locking incurs more overhead, but if done well, it shouldn't be a huge performance hit. The Linux kernel at one point was protected by one, big kernel lock, too, and that was successfully relaxed.