Pyroxide

A lock-free, high-concurrency background task broker for Python, powered by Rust.



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Pyroxide (pyro3) is a lightweight, ultra-high-performance background task broker designed to bridge Python and Rust. It allows CPU-bound or blocking workloads to bypass the Python Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) with minimal memory overhead and zero CPU-sleep polling.

💡 Pyroxide is the perfect fit if you want to:

• Prevent async event loops (like FastAPI) from freezing on heavy CPU calculations.
• Bypass the GIL without the slow startup and heavy pickling overhead of multiprocessing.
• Safely run untrusted user plugins in-process using isolated WASM sandboxes.
• Reuse pre-existing system libraries (.so / .dylib / .dll) GIL-free with zero wrapper code.

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Why Pyroxide?

• 🚀 GIL-Free Performance: Execute CPU-intensive tasks on background threads or isolated processes without holding the Python GIL.
• ⚡ Microsecond Latency: Dispatch and complete tasks in under 25 microseconds using OS-level signaling (Condvar) instead of polling.
• 📦 Zero Infrastructure: Run entirely in-process with no Redis, RabbitMQ, or Celery worker daemons to configure or maintain.
• 💾 Zero-Copy Transport: Route large payloads ($\ge 1\text{MB}$) via OS Shared Memory (SHM) to bypass serialization copying bottlenecks.
• 🛡️ WASM Sandbox Security: Run untrusted user plugins or SaaS workflows in a secure JIT sandbox with strict CPU/memory limits.
• 🛠️ Dynamic FFI Compilation: Compile code strings on-the-fly (Rust, C, Zig) into native libraries with persistent binary caching.

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Pyroxide vs. Alternatives

Feature / Metric	Pyroxide	Threading (std)	Multiprocessing	Celery / RQ
GIL Bypass	✅ Yes (WASM/dylib)	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
IPC / Serialization	✅ None (Shared Memory)	✅ None	❌ High (Pickling)	❌ High (Network/Redis)
Infrastructure	✅ None (Embedded)	✅ None	⚠️ Low (Spawns processes)	❌ High (Redis/RabbitMQ)
Best For	🔥 High-perf in-process pipelines	I/O-bound Python	CPU-heavy Python	Distributed tasks

For a detailed analysis, check out the Library Comparison Guide.

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Installation

From PyPI

pip install pyro3

Build Locally

Ensure you have Rust, Python (3.8+), and maturin installed:

git clone https://github.com/emivvvvv/pyroxide.git
cd pyroxide
pip install maturin
maturin develop

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Quick Start

1. Offload Python Callables

from pyroxide import task

@task
def calculate_square(x: int) -> int:
    return x * x # Runs in background OS threads

# Submit and get a handle immediately
handle = calculate_square(12)
result = handle.result() # Blocks natively (0% CPU) until complete
print(result) # 144

# Or await it non-blockingly inside an async event loop (like FastAPI)
# result = await handle.result_async()

# Pure Python tasks can fully bypass the GIL with `isolated=True`
@task(isolated=True)
def heavy_computation(x: int) -> int:
    return sum(i * i for i in range(x))

2. Batch Submission & Task Groups

Submit tasks in bulk under a single lock acquisition to avoid thread contention, and manage them concurrently:

from pyroxide import task, group

@task
def calculate_square(x: int) -> int:
    return x * x

payloads = [10, 20, 30, 40]

# 1. Batch submit payloads
handles = calculate_square.batch(payloads)

# 2. Bundle into a parallel TaskGroup
tg = group(handles)
print(tg.status) # "Running"

# 3. Retrieve results (consume=False preserves status metadata)
results = tg.result(consume=False)
print(results)   # [100, 400, 900, 1600]
print(tg.status) # "Completed"

3. Sandboxed WebAssembly (GIL-Free)

Run computations GIL-free in a secure, virtual sandbox without compiling native code:

from pyroxide import register_wasm, wasm_task, load_wasm

# 1. Register WebAssembly bytecode
with open("rot13.wasm", "rb") as f:
    register_wasm("rot13", f.read())

# 2. Execute via decorators
@wasm_task("rot13")
def rot13_cipher(payload: str) -> str:
    pass

print(rot13_cipher("hello").result()) # "uryyb"

# 3. Or load as an Object-Oriented Proxy!
cipher = load_wasm("rot13")
print(cipher.run("hello").result()) # "uryyb"

4. Dynamic Shared Libraries (On-the-Fly Compilation)

Compile and load native code strings on-the-fly. Rust (compile_rust), C (compile_c), and Zig (compile_zig) are supported:

from pyroxide import compile_rust, dylib_task, load_dylib

RUST_SRC = """
#[no_mangle]
pub unsafe extern "C" fn pyroxide_plugin_run(ptr: *const u8, len: usize, out_len: *mut usize) -> *mut u8 {
    let input = std::slice::from_raw_parts(ptr, len);
    let s = std::str::from_utf8(input).unwrap_or("");
    let result = s.to_uppercase().into_bytes();
    *out_len = result.len();
    let boxed = result.into_boxed_slice();
    Box::into_raw(boxed) as *mut u8
}

#[no_mangle]
pub unsafe extern "C" fn pyroxide_plugin_free(ptr: *mut u8, len: usize) {
    let _ = Box::from_raw(std::slice::from_raw_parts_mut(ptr, len));
}
"""

# Compile, register and load the Rust library on-the-fly!
compile_rust("rust_upper", RUST_SRC)

# 1. Execute via decorators
@dylib_task("rust_upper")
def to_upper_rust(payload: str) -> str:
    pass

print(to_upper_rust("hello from rust").result())  # "HELLO FROM RUST"

# 2. Or load as an Object-Oriented Proxy to call any custom C-ABI symbol directly!
rust_upper = load_dylib("rust_upper")
print(rust_upper.pyroxide_plugin_run("hello from rust").result())  # "HELLO FROM RUST"

5. Universal FFI (Reusing Precompiled Libraries)

Load standard precompiled system libraries natively without compiling custom code:

import sys
from pyroxide import load_dylib

# Load system math library natively - no pyroxide_plugin_free required for primitives!
libm_name = "libm.dylib" if sys.platform == "darwin" else "libm.so.6"
libm = load_dylib(libm_name, signatures={
    "cos": {"args": ["f64"], "ret": "f64"}
})
print(libm.cos(3.1415926535).result())  # -1.0

6. Programmatic Sandbox Configuration

Configure WebAssembly memory limits, execution timeouts, and queue block/drop timeouts thread-safely:

import pyroxide

# Set global default sandbox parameters
pyroxide.config.set_wasm_limits(memory_limit_bytes=50 * 1024 * 1024, timeout_ms=500)
pyroxide.config.set_queue_timeout(timeout_ms=100)

# Apply context-specific overrides (thread-safe, ideal for multi-tenant SaaS)
with pyroxide.config.scoped(wasm_timeout_ms=50, wasm_memory_limit_bytes=10 * 1024 * 1024):
    handle = rot13_cipher("hello")

7. Static Stub Compilation CLI

Avoid runtime filesystem writes during application startup (which triggers FastAPI reload loops) by statically building type stubs:

# Scan Python files recursively to generate proxy .pyi stubs
pyroxide build-stubs --scan --scan-dir . --out-dir .

# Or read declarative configuration from pyproject.toml
pyroxide build-stubs

8. Environment Variable Reference

Configure Pyroxide dynamically using the following environment variables:

• PYROXIDE_WORKERS: Number of background worker threads in the Rust thread pool (default: available CPU cores).
• PYROXIDE_SHM_THRESHOLD: Payload size threshold in bytes above which data uses Shared Memory (SHM) instead of the local socket (default: 1048576 = 1MB).
• PYROXIDE_WASM_TICK_MS: Granularity of the WASM epoch timeout tick loop in milliseconds (default: 10ms).
• PYROXIDE_WASM_MEMORY_LIMIT_BYTES: Maximum memory allowed for a single WASM instance in bytes (default: 104857600 = 100MB).
• PYROXIDE_WASM_TIMEOUT_MS: Timeout for WASM execution in milliseconds (default: 1000 = 1s).
• PYROXIDE_MAX_TASKS_PER_WORKER: Maximum number of tasks an isolated process worker runs before it is recycled to prevent memory leaks (default: 100).
• PYROXIDE_WORKER_STARTUP_TIMEOUT_SEC: Timeout in seconds for a new worker process to start up and connect (default: 5 seconds).
• PYROXIDE_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SEC: Idle time in seconds before an inactive isolated worker process is terminated (default: 60 seconds).
• PYROXIDE_MIN_WORKERS: Minimum number of warm worker processes to keep alive at all times (default: 0).
• PYROXIDE_DISABLE_COMPILATION: Set to 1 or true to disable runtime compilation of C/Zig/Rust plugins for strict security compliance.

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Dive Deeper (Documentation Book)

Detailed documentation, guides, and implementation examples are available in our Documentation Book:

• Asynchronous Event Loops: Non-blockingly await tasks using await handle.result_async() in FastAPI/asyncio. Read Chapter.
• Isolated Worker Processes: Sandbox tasks in separate OS processes for crash safety and GIL bypass. Read Chapter.
• Batch Submissions: Submit multiple tasks under a single lock acquisition to avoid thread contention. Read Chapter.
• Task Cancellation: Gracefully abort long-running background tasks mid-flight. Read Chapter.
• Traceback Preservation: Capture stack traces on background worker threads and propagate them to the main thread. Read Chapter.
• Memory Footprint & GC: Learn how Slab memory is reclaimed automatically using GC destructors. Read Chapter.

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Performance At-a-Glance

We benchmarked Pyroxide against CPython's standard concurrency pools using identical compute payloads (recursive Fibonacci 20 workload) on Apple M1 Pro (8 cores, 16GB RAM):

Metric (100 Tasks)	Pyroxide @dylib_task	Pyroxide @task(isolated=True)	Pyroxide @task	Threading (std)	Multiprocessing
Execution Time	0.0034 s	0.0157 s	0.0842 s	0.0751 s	2.1925 s

• Bypassing the Multiprocessing Bottleneck: While Python's ProcessPoolExecutor takes over 2.1 seconds due to slow process spawning and heavy pickle IPC serialization, Pyroxide's @task(isolated=True) executes in just 15 milliseconds—offering a 140x speedup with optimized single-pass pickling and zero-copy shared memory.

Real-World Odoo Enterprise Arrow Ledger Audit Benchmark

To test performance under realistic enterprise data movement workloads, we ran a simulated Odoo Ledger Audit benchmark processing a 9.62 MB Apache Arrow serialized transaction recordset (200,000 journal items) across 10 concurrent requests comparing different concurrency strategies:

• CPython ThreadPoolExecutor (GIL-Locked): 0.3453 s
• Pyroxide Threaded @task (GIL-Locked): 0.3239 s (matches Python's native scheduling overhead perfectly)
• ProcessPoolExecutor (Python, Pickled Pipes): 0.2625 s
• Pyroxide SHM Isolated @task (Zero-Copy SHM): 0.3241 s
• Pyroxide @dylib_task (C-compiled, GIL-Free): 0.0095 s (bypasses GIL entirely)

Key Takeaway: By offloading the audit logic to a dynamically compiled C/Rust plugin running on Pyroxide's background thread pool, we achieve a 36.3x speedup over CPython's standard ThreadPoolExecutor by completely bypassing the GIL.

To run the Odoo simulation suite locally:

PYTHONPATH=python:. python3 examples/odoo_poc/odoo_complex_simulation.py

To run the comparative and basic benchmark suites locally:

# 1. Run detailed comparative benchmarks against CPython concurrency pools
PYTHONPATH=python:examples/benchmarks python3 examples/benchmarks/benchmark_vs_alternatives.py

# 2. Run basic scheduling latency and asyncio benchmarks
PYTHONPATH=python python3 examples/benchmarks/benchmark.py

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you'd like to improve Pyroxide or add support for additional features, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

License

Pyroxide is licensed under any of:

• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT)
• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• Coffeeware License (LICENSE-COFFEE)

at your option.