Numba

Abstract

Dynamic, interpreted languages, like Python, are attractive for domain-experts and scientists experimenting with new ideas. However, the performance of the interpreter is often a barrier when scaling to larger data sets. This paper presents a just-in-time compiler for Python that focuses in scientific and array-oriented computing. Starting with the simple syntax of Python, Numba compiles a subset of the language into efficient machine code that is comparable in performance to a traditional compiled language. In addition, we share our experience in building a JIT compiler using LLVM[1].