[pygame] speculation: a JIT for Pygame

[Lenard Lindstrom <len-l@xxxxxxxxx>]

The problem:

Unlike other image packages, Pygame supports operations on many 
different pixel formats: 32 bit pixel with alpha can blit to 24 bit 
without alpha, eight bit palette can blit to 16 bit without alpha, and 
so on. This makes it cumbersome to add new blit operations, like 
exclusive-or, and even more difficult to add a new pixel format.

The proposal:

With the acceptance of PEP 3146 the Unladen Swallow offshoot of CPython 
will be merged back into trunk Python sometime around Python 3.3. 
Unladen Swallow brings with it a Python JIT powered by LLVM. LLVM is a 
compiler tool kit that also provides runtime compilation to machine 
code. So the idea is to generate blitters on demand for various pixel 
configurations with LLVM.

Alternatives:

Another possibility is to design as generic a blitter loop as possible, 
then include some specialized loops for common pixel formats. Or one 
could develop a preprocessor that translates a specialized blit 
description language into corresponding C code, much the way Pyrex 
transforms Python like code into C. This approach is used to write sound 
modules for the Lisp based sound processing language Nyquist.


This is all just far out speculation. It is a long term goal not 
intended for the next Pygame release.

Lenard Lindstrom