PyPy 1.2 released
morepypy.blogspot.com
morepypy.blogspot.com
Still, this is pretty exciting news: A speedy, JIT Python compiler written in Python. I look forward to seeing PyPy become the canonical Python compiler in a couple of years.
I think Unladen Swallow might be ahead of them on that one since they're much closer to getting integrated with Python 3.0 (and they're supported by Google, who also has Guido on their payroll!)
met% python -m timeit "sum(x**2 for x in xrange(10000))"
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.14 msec per loop
met% ./bin/pypy -m timeit "sum(x**2 for x in xrange(10000))"
100 loops, best of 3: 5.18 msec per loop
Almost a five-fold slowdown, in my hands.Don't know what you mean by artificial; it was the first test I tried.
met% file ./bin/pypy
./bin/pypy: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped