GIL

Contents

• GIL
  • Problem
  • Solution
  • Discussion
  • Reference

Problem

• What is GIL?
• Why GIL?
• When?
• How to release and requeire GIL?

Solution

Global Interpreter Lock is a mutex that protects access to Python objects, preventing multiple threads from executing Python bytecodes at once. That allows only one thread to hold the control of the Python interpreter. This lock is necessary mainly because CPython’s memory management is not thread-safe.

“One thread runs Python, while N others sleep or await I/O.”

Discussion

Reference

• Python GIL
• GlobalInterpreterLock
• Grok GIL