Lidi Zheng, Pau Freixes - gRPC Python, C Extensions, and AsyncIO

Python Ai

gRPC Python, C Extensions, and AsyncIO: Learn how the gRPC team implemented a new completion queue callback and improved performance with the help of Sizen, a language similar to Python.

Key takeaways

gRPC C++ team implemented a new completion queue callback which is based on callbacks.
The new gRPC AsyncIO API has been released and is available for use.
To make things easier, people are trying to come up with simpler ways to do it, such as better C++ framework and glue code generators.
The gRPC Python team decided to use Sizen because it’s similar to Python, making it easier for gRPC Python users to help improve the library.
The main issue was addressing the problem of deadlocks in gRPC and Python, which was causing a lot of contention and performance issues.
Sizen provides tooling to compile Python code into C++ code and has a valid thread that makes it easy to use.
The main interface for pulling events was a blocking interface, and they needed a way to release the JIL (Global Interpreter Lock) without blocking.
The gRPC Python team implemented a new I/O manager and a new callback-based API to address the deadlocks.
The new solution provided good performance and was easy to implement.
The gRPC team worked with the Python team to integrate gRPC with Python and AsyncIO, which required a lot of effort to make Python work with C++.
Sizen is a language similar to Python and is adopted by NumPy, SCIPy, and TensorFlow.
The gRPC Python team integrated well with protobuf, which enforces API contracts.
The gRPC Python team received $400,000 per day from their services.
Python’s memory management model is very different from C++’s, which makes it error-prone when managing C++ objects in Python space.
Sizen is a language that compiles to C++ and has its own syntax and semantics.
Sizen is designed for distributed systems and is fast, lightweight, and easy to use.
Sizen provides a way to compile entirely Python source code, but it’s not a strict superset of Python.
The gRPC team used Sizen to make Python work with C++ and integrated it with AsyncIO.

Lidi Zheng, Pau Freixes - gRPC Python, C Extensions, and AsyncIO

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