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[Python-Dev] GIL, Python 3, and MP vs. UP

Josiah Carlson jcarlson at uci.edu
Thu Sep 22 07:48:13 CEST 2005 
Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.com> wrote:
> 
> > The best way to make people stop complaining about the GIL and start  
> > using
> > process-based multiprogramming is to provide solid, standardized support
> > for process-based multiprogramming.
> 
> And the model provided by the thread abstraction is a good API for that
> support...

While creating a thread is generally quite easy, the threading
abstraction assumes globally shared memory.  Certainly there are
multiprocessing systems which handle transferring of data between
disparate memories automatically (Linda/PyLinda, POSH, etc.), but no
doubt some users will want a more fine-grained control of data transfer
(and this is saying nothing of the shared-memory model's currently
horrible performance in Python).

As such, there is always the option of using the tried and true MPI and
PyMPI, which looks to have been recently updated.  Or even XMLRPC and
PickleRPC over sockets and/or mmap'd files.

Then again, with how easy it is to distribute workloads using (Py)Linda,
I'd be hard pressed to suggest any other module for multiprocessing into
the standard library (unless it was a work-alike)...though perhaps we
should wait until it has been sped up a bit, supports more data types,
etc.


 - Josiah
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