Psyco is an unmaintained specializing

just-in-time compiler In computing, just-in-time (JIT) compilation (also dynamic translation or run-time compilations) is compiler, compilation (of Source code, computer code) during execution of a program (at run time (program lifecycle phase), run time) rather than b ...

for pre-2.7 Python originally developed by Armin Rigo and further maintained and developed by Christian Tismer. Development ceased in December, 2011. Psyco ran on

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

-derived operating systems,

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

using

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

Intel-compatible processors. Psyco was written in C and generated only 32-bit

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

-based code. Although Tismer announced on 17 July 2009 that work was being done on a second version of Psyco, a further announcement declared the project "unmaintained and dead" on 12 March 2012 and pointed visitors to PyPy instead. Unlike Psyco, PyPy incorporates an interpreter and a compiler that can generate C, improving its cross-platform compatibility over Psyco.

Speed enhancement

Psyco can noticeably speed up CPU-bound applications. The actual performance depends greatly on the application and varies from a slight slowdown to a 100x speedup. The average speed improvement is typically in the 1.5-4x range, making Python performance close to languages such as

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

and Scheme, but still slower than compiled languages such as Fortran, C or some other JIT languages like C# and

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. Psyco also advertises its ease of use: the simplest Psyco optimization involves adding only two lines to the top of a script: import psyco psyco.full() These commands will import the psyco module, and have Psyco optimize the entire script. This approach is best suited to shorter scripts, but demonstrates the minimal amount of work needed to begin applying Psyco optimizations to an existing program.

References

External links

* * David Mertz's IBM developerWorks article
Make Python run as fast as C with Psyco

psyco notes, Poor Yorick
Free software programmed in Python Python (programming language) implementations Python (programming language) software Software using the MIT license {{Free-software-stub

Speed enhancement

See also

References

External links