What is the global interpreter lock (GIL) in CPython?

Question

I want to know more about global interpreter lock and why is it considered an issue?

Answer 1

Kindly be informed that Python's GIL is designed to serialize access to interpreter internals from different threads. On multi-core systems, it means that multiple threads can't completely make use of multiple cores.

Note that Python's GIL is only an issue for CPython, the reference implementation. Jython and IronPython don't have a GIL. Generally, you will not come across the GIL except you're writing a C extension. C extension writers need to release the GIL when their extensions do blocking I/O so that other threads in the Python process get a chance to run.

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