Speed-up Native Python Code using Cython

...in just 4 simple steps.

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Speed up Native Python Code using Cython

Python’s default interpreter (CPython) is slow primarily because of its dynamicity.

For instance, after defining a variable of a specific type, it can be changed to some other type.

But these dynamic manipulations come at the cost of run-time and memory overheads.

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Cython addresses this by automatically converting your Python code into C, which is fast and efficient.

This snippet explains the usage:

1. Load the Cython module: %load_ext Cython

2. Add the Cython magic command

3. When using functions, specify the parameter data type

4. Define every variable using the “cdef” keyword and specify its data type.

Done!

Once you do that, Cython will convert our Python code to C, as depicted below:

Cython converts Python code to C

This will run at native machine code speed.

The speedup is evident from the image below:

• Python code is slow.

• But Cython provides over 100x speedup.

👉 Over to you: What are some other limitations of Python’s default interpreter?

Thanks for reading!

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