Advanced Python Programming

An overview of the multiprocessing module

The multiprocessing module is one of the most commonly used implementations of multiprocessing programming in Python. It offers methods to spawn and interact with processes using an API similar to the threading module (as we saw with the start() and join() methods in the preceding example). According to its documentation website, the module allows both local and remote concurrency and effectively avoids the global interpreter lock (GIL) in Python (which we will discuss in more detail later in Chapter 22, The Global Interpreter Lock) by using subprocesses instead of threads.