Experience GIL-Free Multithreading: A New Feature in Python 3.13

Python 3.13 introduces GIL-free multithreading, improving CPU-intensive task efficiency by over twofold compared to previous versions.

The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is one of Python’s most debated features.

Its primary function is to ensure that Python is a thread-safe language, preventing multiple threads from accessing and modifying the same memory simultaneously.

However, this also severely limits Python’s multithreading performance.

While the GIL guarantees thread safety, it causes most multithreaded Python programs to run as if they were single-threaded, making it difficult for CPU-intensive tasks to take full advantage of multi-core CPUs.

Free-threaded Python is set to be a major update in Python 3.13.

This update paves the way for the Python Foundation to make GIL optional. The pre-release version of Python 3.13 was launched on October 1, 2024, with the official release planned for October 7, 2024. This update allows users to easily enable free-threaded Python, and the process is straightforward.

Next, we will explore the efficiency improvements of GIL-free multithreading with the python-3.13.0rc3-amd64 version on Windows.