Psyco

Infobox_Software
name = Psyco



caption =
developer = Armin Rigo
latest_release_version = 1.6
latest_release_date = December 16, 2007
operating_system = Cross-platform
genre = just-in-time compiler for Python
license = MIT License
website = http://psyco.sourceforge.net

Psyco is a specializing just-in-time compiler for Python developed by Armin Rigo.

Psyco runs on BSD-derived operating systems, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows using 32-bit Intel-compatible processors. It is feature complete and no further development is expected to take place. Psyco is written in C and generates only x86-based code. A follow-up project to Psyco is PyPy, which incorporates an interpreter, and a compiler that can generate C, improving its cross-platform compatibility over Psyco. Both parts are written in Python, but the interpreter is restricted to a subset of Python, called RPython.

Speed enhancement

Psyco can noticeably speed up CPU-bound applications. The actual performance depends greatly on the application and varies from slight slowdown (quite rare) to 40x speedup (also quite rare). [cite web |url=http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sandbox/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=psyco |title=Python Psyco benchmarks |accessdate=2008-04-24 |format=HTML |work= ] The average speed improvement is approximately 4x, making Python performance close to compiled languages as Smalltalk, Scheme, but still slower than other compiled or JITted languages as C#, Java, Fortran or C. [cite web |url=http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all |title=Shootout rankings |accessdate=2008-04-24 |format=HTML
work= ]

See also

* PyPy
* YARV
* Shed Skin Python to C++ compiler
* RPython

References

External links

* [http://psyco.sourceforge.net/ The Psyco home page]
* David Mertz's IBM developerWorks article [http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-psyco.html Make Python run as fast as C with Psyco]