Ritchie Vink - Polars 1.0 and beyond | PyData Amsterdam 2024

Polars 1.0 achieved API stabilization in July 2023, focusing on fewer breaking changes while maintaining high performance for data frame operations

New GPU acceleration support through collaboration with NVIDIA Rapids team, offering up to 13x speedups on certain operations while maintaining semantic consistency across CPU/GPU execution

Built-in optimizer that analyzes query trees to minimize unnecessary operations and improve execution efficiency before materialization

New non-equijoin algorithm implementation claimed to be the fastest available, expanding join capabilities beyond traditional equijoins

Custom async runtime development for efficient parallel processing, specifically designed for morsel-driven parallelism and compute-bound workloads

Minimal dependency approach - Polars ships as a single binary with almost no required Python dependencies to reduce security risks and binary size

Improved I/O performance through better parquet reader implementation and smart caching for CSV/NDJson files

New plugin system allowing third-party developers to extend functionality while maintaining native performance

Integration of plotting capabilities through Altair backend without compromising core engine focus

Development of new streaming engine to handle data that doesn’t fit in memory, with focus on maintaining consistent API semantics