Complaining about the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) seems like a rite of passage for Python developers. It’s easy to criticize a design decision made before multi-core CPU’s were widely available, but the fact that it’s still around indicates that it generally works Good Enough. Besides, there are simple and effective workarounds; it’s not hard to start a new process and use message passing to synchronize code running in parallel.

Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have more than a single active interpreter thread? In an age of asynchronicity and M:N threading, Python seems lacking. The ideal scenario is to take advantage of both Python’s productivity and the modern CPU’s parallel capabilities.

Presented below are two strategies for releasing the GIL’s icy grip without giving up on what makes Python a nice language to start with. Bear in mind: these are just the tools, no claim is made about whether it’s a good idea to use them. Very often, unlocking the GIL is an XY problem; you want application performance, and the GIL seems like an obvious bottleneck. Remember that any gains from running code in parallel come at the expense of project complexity; messing with the GIL is ultimately messing with Python’s memory model.

%load_ext Cython
from numba import jit

N = 1_000_000_000

Cython

Put simply, Cython is a programming language that looks a lot like Python, gets transpiled to C/C++, and integrates well with the CPython API. It’s great for building Python wrappers to C and C++ libraries, writing optimized code for numerical processing, and tons more. And when it comes to managing the GIL, there are two special features:

The nogil function annotation asserts that a Cython function is safe to use without the GIL, and compilation will fail if it interacts with Python in an unsafe manner
The with nogil context manager explicitly unlocks the CPython GIL while active

Whenever Cython code runs inside a with nogil block on a separate thread, the Python interpreter is unblocked and allowed to continue work elsewhere. We’ll define a “busy work” function that demonstrates this principle in action:

%%cython

# Annotating a function with `nogil` indicates only that it is safe
# to call in a `with nogil` block. It *does not* release the GIL.
cdef unsigned long fibonacci(unsigned long n) nogil:
    if n <= 1:
        return n

    cdef unsigned long a = 0, b = 1, c = 0

    c = a + b
    for _i in range(2, n):
        a = b
        b = c
        c = a + b

    return c


def cython_nogil(unsigned long n):
    # Explicitly release the GIL while running `fibonacci`
    with nogil:
        value = fibonacci(n)

    return value


def cython_gil(unsigned long n):
    # Because the GIL is not explicitly released, it implicitly
    # remains acquired when running the `fibonacci` function
    return fibonacci(n)

First, let’s time how long it takes Cython to calculate the billionth Fibonacci number:

%%time
_ = cython_gil(N);

CPU times: user 365 ms, sys: 0 ns, total: 365 ms
Wall time: 372 ms

%%time
_ = cython_nogil(N);

CPU times: user 381 ms, sys: 0 ns, total: 381 ms
Wall time: 388 ms

Both versions (with and without GIL) take effectively the same amount of time to run. Even when running this calculation in parallel on separate threads, it is expected that the run time will double because only one thread can be active at a time:

%%time
from threading import Thread

# Create the two threads to run on
t1 = Thread(target=cython_gil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=cython_gil, args=[N])
# Start the threads
t1.start(); t2.start()
# Wait for the threads to finish
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 641 ms, sys: 5.62 ms, total: 647 ms
Wall time: 645 ms

However, if the first thread releases the GIL, the second thread is free to acquire it and run in parallel:

%%time

t1 = Thread(target=cython_nogil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=cython_gil, args=[N])
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 717 ms, sys: 372 µs, total: 718 ms
Wall time: 358 ms

Because user time represents the sum of processing time on all threads, it doesn’t change much. The “wall time” has been cut roughly in half because each function is running simultaneously.

Keep in mind that the order in which threads are started makes a difference!

%%time

# Note that the GIL-locked version is started first
t1 = Thread(target=cython_gil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=cython_nogil, args=[N])
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 667 ms, sys: 0 ns, total: 667 ms
Wall time: 672 ms

Even though the second thread releases the GIL while running, it can’t start until the first has completed. Thus, the overall runtime is effectively the same as running two GIL-locked threads.

Finally, be aware that attempting to unlock the GIL from a thread that doesn’t own it will crash the interpreter, not just the thread attempting the unlock:

%%cython

cdef int cython_recurse(int n) nogil:
    if n <= 0:
        return 0

    with nogil:
        return cython_recurse(n - 1)

cython_recurse(2)

Fatal Python error: PyEval_SaveThread: NULL tstate

Thread 0x00007f499effd700 (most recent call first):
  File "/home/bspeice/.virtualenvs/release-the-gil/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ipykernel/parentpoller.py", line 39 in run
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/threading.py", line 926 in _bootstrap_inner
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/threading.py", line 890 in _bootstrap

In practice, avoiding this issue is simple. First, nogil functions probably shouldn’t contain with nogil blocks. Second, Cython can conditionally acquire/release the GIL, so these conditions can be used to synchronize access. Finally, Cython’s documentation for external C code contains more detail on how to safely manage the GIL.

To conclude: use Cython’s nogil annotation to assert that functions are safe for calling when the GIL is unlocked, and with nogil to actually unlock the GIL and run those functions.

Numba

Like Cython, Numba is a “compiled Python.” Where Cython works by compiling a Python-like language to C/C++, Numba compiles Python bytecode directly to machine code at runtime. Behavior is controlled with a special @jit decorator; calling a decorated function first compiles it to machine code before running. Calling the function a second time re-uses that machine code unless the argument types have changed.

Numba works best when a nopython=True argument is added to the @jit decorator; functions compiled in nopython mode avoid the CPython API and have performance comparable to C. Further, adding nogil=True to the @jit decorator unlocks the GIL while that function is running. Note that nogil and nopython are separate arguments; while it is necessary for code to be compiled in nopython mode in order to release the lock, the GIL will remain locked if nogil=False (the default).

Let’s repeat the same experiment, this time using Numba instead of Cython:

# The `int` type annotation is only for humans and is ignored
# by Numba.
@jit(nopython=True, nogil=True)
def numba_nogil(n: int) -> int:
    if n <= 1:
        return n

    a = 0
    b = 1

    c = a + b
    for _i in range(2, n):
        a = b
        b = c
        c = a + b

    return c


# Run using `nopython` mode to receive a performance boost,
# but GIL remains locked due to `nogil=False` by default.
@jit(nopython=True)
def numba_gil(n: int) -> int:
    if n <= 1:
        return n

    a = 0
    b = 1

    c = a + b
    for _i in range(2, n):
        a = b
        b = c
        c = a + b

    return c


# Call each function once to force compilation; we don't want
# the timing statistics to include how long it takes to compile.
numba_nogil(N)
numba_gil(N);

We’ll perform the same tests as above; first, figure out how long it takes the function to run:

%%time
_ = numba_gil(N)

CPU times: user 253 ms, sys: 258 µs, total: 253 ms
Wall time: 251 ms

Aside: it’s not immediately clear why Numba takes ~20% less time to run than Cython for code that should be effectively identical after compilation.

When running two GIL-locked threads, the result (as expected) takes around twice as long to compute:

%%time
t1 = Thread(target=numba_gil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=numba_gil, args=[N])
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 541 ms, sys: 3.96 ms, total: 545 ms
Wall time: 541 ms

But if the GIL-unlocking thread starts first, both threads run in parallel:

%%time
t1 = Thread(target=numba_nogil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=numba_gil, args=[N])
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 551 ms, sys: 7.77 ms, total: 559 ms
Wall time: 279 ms

Just like Cython, starting the GIL-locked thread first leads to poor performance:

%%time
t1 = Thread(target=numba_gil, args=[N])
t2 = Thread(target=numba_nogil, args=[N])
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

CPU times: user 524 ms, sys: 0 ns, total: 524 ms
Wall time: 522 ms

Finally, unlike Cython, Numba will unlock the GIL if and only if it is currently acquired; recursively calling @jit(nogil=True) functions is perfectly safe:

from numba import jit

@jit(nopython=True, nogil=True)
def numba_recurse(n: int) -> int:
    if n <= 0:
        return 0

    return numba_recurse(n - 1)

numba_recurse(2);

Conclusion

Before finishing, it’s important to address pain points that will show up if these techniques are used in a more realistic project:

First, code running in a GIL-free context will likely also need non-trivial data structures; GIL-free functions aren’t useful if they’re constantly interacting with Python objects whose access requires the GIL. Cython provides extension types and Numba provides a @jitclass decorator to address this need.

Second, building and distributing applications that make use of Cython/Numba can be complicated. Cython packages require running the compiler, (potentially) linking/packaging external dependencies, and distributing a binary wheel. Numba is generally simpler because the code being distributed is pure Python, but can be tricky since errors aren’t detected until runtime.

Finally, while unlocking the GIL is often a solution in search of a problem, both Cython and Numba provide tools to directly manage the GIL when appropriate. This enables true parallelism (not just concurrency) that is impossible in vanilla Python.

Release the GIL

Strategies for Parallelism in Python

Cython

Numba

Conclusion