Re: [pygame] speculation: a JIT for Pygame

[René Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Sounds cool.

have you seen orc?   http://www.schleef.org/blog/category/liboil/

cya.


On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Lenard Lindstrom <len-l@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>
>