Python Language Tutorial => Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and...

Example

Plenty has been written about Python's GIL. It can sometimes cause confusion when dealing with multi-threaded (not to be confused with multiprocess) applications.

Here's an example:

import math
from threading import Thread

def calc_fact(num):
    math.factorial(num)

num = 600000
t = Thread(target=calc_fact, daemon=True, args=[num])
print("About to calculate: {}!".format(num))
t.start()
print("Calculating...")
t.join()
print("Calculated")

You would expect to see Calculating... printed out immediately after the thread is started, we wanted the calculation to happen in a new thread after all! But in actuality, you see it get printed after the calculation is complete. That is because the new thread relies on a C function (math.factorial) which will lock the GIL while it executes.

There are a couple ways around this. The first is to implement your factorial function in native Python. This will allow the main thread to grab control while you are inside your loop. The downside is that this solution will be a lot slower, since we're not using the C function anymore.

def calc_fact(num):
    """ A slow version of factorial in native Python """
    res = 1
    while num >= 1:
        res = res * num
        num -= 1
    return res

You can also sleep for a period of time before starting your execution. Note: this won't actually allow your program to interrupt the computation happening inside the C function, but it will allow your main thread to continue after the spawn, which is what you may expect.

def calc_fact(num):
    sleep(0.001)
    math.factorial(num)

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