Back in the late 90s (!) I worked on a reimagining of the Python virtual machine as a register-based VM based on 1.5.2. I got part of the way with that, but never completed it. In the early 2010s, Victor Stinner got much further using 3.4 as a base. The idea (and dormant code) has been laying around in my mind (and computers) these past couple decades, so I took another swing at it starting in late 2019 after retirement, mostly as a way to keep my head in the game. While I got a fair bit of the way, it stalled. I've picked it up and put it down a number of times in the past year, often needing to resolve conflicts because of churn in the current Python virtual machine. Though I kept getting things back in sync, I realize this is not a one-person project, at least not this one person. There are several huge chunks of Python I've ignored over the past 20 years, and not just the internals. (I've never used async anything, for example.) If it is ever to truly be a viable demonstration of the concept, I will need help. I forked the CPython repo and have a branch (register2) of said fork which is currently synced up with the 3.10 (currently master) branch:
https://github.com/smontanaro/cpython/tree/register2 I started on what could only very generously be called a PEP which you can read here. It includes some of the history of this work as well as details about what I've managed to do so far: https://github.com/smontanaro/cpython/blob/register2/pep-9999.rst If you think any of this is remotely interesting (whether or not you think you'd like to help), please have a look at the "PEP". Because this covers a fair bit of the CPython implementation, chances to contribute in a number of areas exist, even if you have never delved into Python's internals. Questions/comments/pull requests welcome. Skip Montanaro -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
