Jorgen Grahn wrote: > On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:39:57 -0700, Alex Martelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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... > > Maybe it would change /perceptions/, but would normal users suddenly > start running things that are (a) performance-critical, (b) written in > Python and (c) use algorithms that are possible to parallellize? > > I doubt it. (But I admit that I am a bit negative towards thread > programming in general, and I have whined about this before.) > Well there seems to be little doubt that the rise in clock speeds is reaching a plateau, so it seems like parallelization will have to be the long-term trend. It's difficult to perform a deep enough static analysis of programs in dynamic languages to automatically parallelize the code (it's hard enough for languages like Fortran), but I am sure that over the next few years languages will start to sprout features that make programmer-directed parallelization easier.
I'd like to see Python leading that charge, not failing to track it. So, stop being a Luddite ;-) regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden Recent Ramblings http://holdenweb.blogspot.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
