[captainmuon]

You can use a custom memory allocator in python? I wonder if this is somehow pluggable, or if they had to modify the interpreter.

[Scaevolus]

All you need to do is set the appropriate type's tp_alloc/tp_dealloc function pointers [1] (type-specific malloc/free functions). Dropbox was having fragmentation issues from the large amount of garbage generated while scanning the filesystem, and making memory allocation use type-specific memory pools fixed it.

    [1] http://docs.python.org/2/c-api/typeobj.html#PyTypeObject.tp_alloc

[zaphar]

The dropbox guys gave a talk about this at pycon one year but I'm having trouble finding it now. I remember thinking it involved less work than I thought it would.

[plodit]

I think this is what you're looking for: http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how...

[sesqu]

According to the article, they do use a modified interpreter.