6 items tagged “gil”
2022
Weeknotes: Datasette Lite, nogil Python, HYTRADBOI
My big project this week was Datasette Lite, a new way to run Datasette directly in a browser, powered by WebAssembly and Pyodide. I also continued my research into running SQL queries in parallel, described last week. Plus I spoke at HYTRADBOI.
[... 1434 words]Testing Datasette parallel SQL queries in the nogil/python fork. As part of my ongoing research into whether Datasette can be sped up by running SQL queries in parallel I’ve been growing increasingly suspicious that the GIL is holding me back. I know the sqlite3 module releases the GIL and was hoping that would give me parallel queries, but it looks like there’s still a ton of work going on in Python GIL land creating Python objects representing the results of the query.
Sam Gross has been working on a nogil fork of Python and I decided to give it a go. It’s published as a Docker image and it turns out trying it out really did just take a few commands... and it produced the desired results, my parallel code started beating my serial code where previously the two had produced effectively the same performance numbers.
I’m pretty stunned by this. I had no idea how far along the nogil fork was. It’s amazing to see it in action. # 29th April 2022, 5:45 am
[history] When I tried this in 1996 (via) “I removed the GIL back in 1996 from Python 1.4...” is the start of a fascinating (supportive) comment by Greg Stein on the promising nogil Python fork that Sam Gross has been putting together. Greg provides some historical context that I’d never heard before, relating to an embedded Python for Microsoft IIS. # 21st February 2022, 10:43 pm
2021
The GIL and its effects on Python multithreading (via) Victor Skvortsov presents the most in-depth explanation of the Python Global Interpreter Lock I’ve seen anywhere. I learned a ton from reading this. # 29th September 2021, 5:23 pm
2009
jessenoller.com—python magazine. Jesse Noller has been sharing his articles originally published in Python Magazine. Topics include SSH programming with Paramiko, context managers and the with statement and an excellent explanation of Python’s threading support and the global interpreter lock. # 5th February 2009, 11:10 pm
2008
What’s New in Python 2.6. The new multiprocessing package looks pretty useful, especially as it provides a way to work around Python’s GIL. # 1st September 2008, 9:03 pm