We’re pleased and proud to unleash PyPy 4.0.0, a major update of the PyPy python 2.7.10 compatible interpreter with a Just In Time compiler. We have improved warmup time and memory overhead used for tracing, added vectorization for numpy and general loops where possible on x86 hardware (disabled by default), refactored rough edges in rpython, and increased functionality of numpy.
You can download the PyPy 4.0.0 release here:
We would like to thank our donors for the continued support of the PyPy project.
We would also like to thank our contributors (7 new ones since PyPy 2.6.0) and encourage new people to join the project. PyPy has many layers and we need help with all of them: PyPy and RPython documentation improvements, tweaking popular modules to run on pypy, or general help with making RPython’s JIT even better.
Since the past release, PyPy 2.6.1, we decided to update the PyPy 2.x.x versioning directly to PyPy 4.x.x, to avoid confusion with CPython 2.7 and 3.5. Note that this version of PyPy uses the stdlib and implements the syntax of CPython 2.7.10.
Richard Plangger began work in March and continued over a Google Summer of Code to add a vectorization step to the trace optimizer. The step recognizes common constructs and emits SIMD code where possible, much as any modern compiler does. This vectorization happens while tracing running code, so it is actually easier at run-time to determine the availability of possible vectorization than it is for ahead-of-time compilers.
Availability of SIMD hardware is detected at run time, without needing to precompile various code paths into the executable.
The first version of the vectorization has been merged in this release, since it is so new it is off by default. To enable the vectorization in built-in JIT drivers (like numpy ufuncs), add –jit vec=1, to enable all implemented vectorization add –jit vec_all=1
Benchmarks and a summary of this work appear here
Maciej Fijalkowski and Armin Rigo refactored internals of rpython that now allow PyPy to more efficiently use guards in jitted code. They also rewrote unrolling, leading to a warmup time improvement of 20% or so. The reduction in guards also means a reduction in the use of memory, also a savings of around 20%.
Our implementation of numpy continues to improve. ndarray and the numeric dtypes are very close to feature-complete; record, string and unicode dtypes are mostly supported. We have reimplemented numpy linalg, random and fft as cffi-1.0 modules that call out to the same underlying libraries that upstream numpy uses. Please try it out, especially using the new vectorization (via –jit vec=1 on the command line) and let us know what is missing for your code.
While not applicable only to PyPy, cffi is arguably our most significant contribution to the python ecosystem. Armin Rigo continued improving it, and PyPy reaps the benefits of cffi-1.3: improved manangement of object lifetimes, __stdcall on Win32, ffi.memmove(), and percolate const, restrict keywords from cdef to C code.
PyPy is a very compliant Python interpreter, almost a drop-in replacement for CPython 2.7. It’s fast (pypy and cpython 2.7.x performance comparison) due to its integrated tracing JIT compiler.
We also welcome developers of other dynamic languages to see what RPython can do for them.
This release supports x86 machines on most common operating systems (Linux 32/64, Mac OS X 64, Windows 32, OpenBSD, freebsd), as well as newer ARM hardware (ARMv6 or ARMv7, with VFPv3) running Linux.
We also introduce support for the 64 bit PowerPC hardware, specifically Linux running the big- and little-endian variants of ppc64.
Please try it out and let us know what you think. We welcome feedback, we know you are using PyPy, please tell us about it!
Cheers
The PyPy Team