Archibald & Seibert - PIXIE: Blending Just-in-time and Ahead-of-time compilation | SciPy 2024

PIXIE is a new compilation framework that blends just-in-time (JIT) and ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation approaches for Python, focusing on scientific computing applications

Key components:

• Storage convention for embedding metadata and multiple compiled function implementations
• Runtime dispatch mechanism to select optimal implementation
• Build-time tooling for creating specialized libraries

Main benefits:

• Quick startup times of AOT compilation
• Runtime optimization capabilities of JIT compilation
• Hardware specialization without sacrificing JIT capabilities
• No runtime dependencies for end users

Core features:

• Can embed multiple CPU-specific implementations in a single .SO file
• Automatic selection of optimal implementation at runtime
• Support for C and Cython code (with more languages planned)
• Preserves debugging information and optimization metadata

Current limitations/status:

• Alpha stage software
• Limited OS support (Linux x86, Mac ARM)
• Some rough edges in tooling
• Requires unreleased versions of Numba/LLVM

Future directions:

• Cross-compilation support
• GPU/accelerator support
• Additional language wrappers (Fortran, Rust)
• Integration with other tools like MLIR
• Binary size optimization
• Windows support

Designed to solve distribution problems where:

• JIT compilation is not allowed
• Startup latency must be minimized
• Hardware-specific optimizations are needed
• Multiple architecture targets must be supported