Actually, it turns out that the PyPy JIT compiler produces code which is fast enough to do realtime video processing using two simple algorithms implemented by Håkan Ardö.
sobel.py implements a classical way of locating edges in images, the Sobel operator. It is an approximation of the magnitude of the image gradient. The processing time is spend on two convolutions between the image and 3x3-kernels.
magnify.py implements a pixel coordinate transformation that rearranges the pixels in the image to form a magnifying effect in the center. It consists of a single loop over the pixels in the output image copying pixels from the input image.
You can try by yourself by downloading the appropriate demo:
To run the demo, you need to have mplayer installed on your system. The demo has been tested only on linux, it might (or not) work also on other systems:
$ pypy pypy-image-demo/sobel.py $ pypy pypy-image-demo/magnify.pyBy default, the two demos uses an example AVI file. To have more fun, you can use your webcam by passing the appropriate mplayer parameters to the scripts, e.g:
$ pypy demo/sobel.py tv://By default magnify.py uses nearest-neighbor interpolation. By adding the option -b, bilinear interpolation will be used instead, which gives smoother result:
$ pypy demo/magnify.py -bThere is only a single implementation of the algorithm in magnify.py. The two different interpolation methods are implemented by subclassing the class used to represent images and embed the interpolation within the pixel access method. PyPy is able to achieve good performance with this kind of abstractions because it can inline the pixel access method and specialize the implementation of the algorithm. In C++ that kind of pixel access method would be virtual and you'll need to use templates to get the same effect without incurring in runtime overhead.
- PyPy: ~47.23 fps
- CPython: ~0.08 fps
This means that on sobel.py, PyPy is 590 times faster. On magnify.py the difference is much less evident and the speedup is "only" 15x.
- PyPy: ~26.92 fps
- CPython: ~1.78 fps
It must be noted that this is an extreme example of what PyPy can do. In particular, you cannot expect (yet :-)) PyPy to be fast enough to run an arbitrary video processing algorithm in real time, but the demo still proves that PyPy has the potential to get there.