Larry Hastings - The Gilectomy
Channel: EuroPython Conference
Date: 02/08/2016

Larry Hastings - The Gilectomy
[EuroPython 2016]
[20 July 2016]
[Bilbao, Euskadi, Spain]
(https://ep2016.europython.eu//conference/talks/the-gilectomy)

CPython's GIL means your Python code can only run on one CPU core at a
time. Can we remove it? Yes, we can... in fact we already have! But is
it worth the cost?

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CPython's "Global Interpreter Lock", or "GIL", was added in 1992. It
was an excellent design decision. But 24 years is a long time--today
it prevents Python from capitalizing on multiple CPUs. Many people
want us to remove the GIL.

It turns out, removing the GIL isn't actually that hard. In fact, I
already removed it, in my experimental "gilectomy" branch. But the GIL
is one reason CPython is so fast! The "gilectomy" makes CPython
shockingly slow.

This talk will discuss the history of the GIL, how the GIL helps make
CPython fast, how the "gilectomy" removed the GIL, and some ways we
might be able to make the "gilectomy" version fast enough to be
useful.