Faster CPython

Mark Shannon initially proposed how to speed CPython ~5X, now being enacted by the Faster CPython team (he’s on it).

This talk primarily talked about the optimizations on the memory overhead required for Python classes. To name a few of the iterations: Python 3.2 used 352 bytes/class, Python 3.6 used 192 bytes/class, and Python 3.12 used 96 bytes/class. Future optimization can bring this below 80 bytes/class. Mark also went over how specialization works (also see Brandt Bucher’s adaptive interpreter talk) and a few other Faster Cpython team efforts.

A notable saying from the talk:

• Nothing is faster than nothing