GIL is a global interpreter lock in CPython, which ensures that only one thread executes Python bytecode at the same time. 1. The existence of GIL is mainly to simplify memory management and avoid problems caused by multi-threaded competition reference counting; 2. It has little impact on I/O-intensive tasks, because threads release GIL when waiting for I/O; 3. What is really affected is compute-intensive tasks, where multithreading cannot improve performance; 4. GIL can be bypassed or reduced through multiprocessing, C extensions, other Python implementations or asynchronous programming; 5. When choosing a solution, trade-offs should be made based on the specific task type and resource overhead. Therefore, although GIL has limitations, it is not an irresponsible problem.
Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is a "stumbling block" that many people encounter when learning multi-threading programming. It limits that only one thread can execute Python bytecode at the same time, which sounds like a performance bottleneck. But in fact, the existence of GIL has its historical background and design considerations. After understanding it clearly, you will find that it is not as bad as you imagined.

What is GIL?
GIL is a global lock that ensures that at any time in the CPython interpreter there is only one thread executing Python bytecode. Although this may limit the efficiency of multi-core CPU usage, it was originally designed to simplify memory management - CPython uses a reference counting mechanism. Without GIL, multiple threads modify object reference counts at the same time will cause competition problems.

Therefore, GIL is not designed to improve performance, but to ensure consistency of the internal state of the interpreter.
A common misunderstanding is: "As long as you use multiple threads, you will definitely be dragged down by GIL." In fact, this is not the case. If the program you write is mainly I/O-intensive tasks (such as network requests, file reading and writing), the impact of GIL is almost negligible. Because the thread will release the GIL while waiting for I/O, other threads can continue to run.

Which scenarios will be affected by GIL?
What is really affected by GIL is compute-intensive multi-threaded program . For example, if you open multiple threads to perform matrix operations, image processing or large number of numerical calculations, no matter how many CPU cores there are, these threads can only be executed in turn.
- Scientific computing and data analysis tasks
- CPU-intensive backend processing
- Parallel algorithm implementation
In this case, Python multithreading does not bring performance improvements, and may even cause additional overhead due to thread switching. At this time, you should consider using the multiprocessing module, which bypasses the limitations of GIL by starting multiple processes.
How to bypass GIL?
If you really need to make the most of a multi-core CPU, there are several common practices:
- Using
multiprocessing
: Each process has its own Python interpreter instance, so naturally GIL will not be shared. - Calling external C extensions: Some libraries (such as NumPy, Pandas) are implemented in C at the bottom, and GIL can be released during execution.
- Use other Python implementations instead: like Jython or IronPython, which do not have GIL but are not as CPython compatibility.
- Using asynchronous programming: Although GIL cannot be bypassed, concurrency capability can be significantly improved in I/O-intensive tasks.
It should be noted that although multiprocessing
can bypass GIL, it also brings higher memory overhead and cost of inter-process communication. Therefore, when choosing a plan, you should make trade-offs based on the specific business scenario.
Written at the end
GIL is one of the features of CPython. It does have limitations on certain types of applications, but it is not an unsolvable problem. The key is to understand your task type and to choose tools reasonably. For most daily development, GIL is not a big issue that needs to be deliberately avoided.
Basically that's it.
The above is the detailed content of Understanding Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL). For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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