Btw, although overly simple (single CPU system!), this benchmark is pretty interesting:
http://muharem.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/erlang-vs-stackless-python-a-first-benchmark/ About the GIL: I think I've heard Guido say the last attempt at removing the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) resulted in a Python that was much slower... which kind-of beats the purpose. I don't think it's feasible to remove the GIL in CPython; the best hope of a GIL-free Python might be PyPy. The general trend seems to be that it's hard enough to program single- thread programs correctly, adding to that extreme concurrency awareness as required when you're programming with threads means it's practically impossible for most programmers to get the programs right. The shared-nothing model seems to be a very workable way to scale for many programs (at least web apps/services). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
