Scalene: a Python CPU+GPU+memory profiler with AI-powered optimization proposals

by Emery Berger, Sam Stern, and Juan Altmayer Pizzorno.

Scalene community Slack

(tweet from Ian Ozsvald, author of High Performance Python)

Python Profiler Links to AI to Improve Code Scalene identifies inefficiencies and asks GPT-4 for suggestions, IEEE Spectrum

Episode 172: Measuring Multiple Facets of Python Performance With Scalene, The Real Python podcast

Scalene web-based user interface: https://scalene-gui.github.io/scalene-gui/

About Scalene

Scalene is a high-performance CPU, GPU and memory profiler for Python that does a number of things that other Python profilers do not and cannot do. It runs orders of magnitude faster than many other profilers while delivering far more detailed information. It is also the first profiler ever to incorporate AI-powered proposed optimizations.

AI-powered optimization suggestions

Note

For optimization suggestions, Scalene supports a variety of AI providers, including Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Azure, OpenAI, and local models via Ollama. To enable AI-powered optimization suggestions from AI providers, you need to select a provider and, if needed, enter your credentials, in the box under "AI Optimization Options". To prefill them from environment variables (such as OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, or AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID), view the profile with scalene view --api-keys-from-env; the keys are passed only to your local browser session and are never written into the HTML file.

Once you've entered your key and any other needed data, click on the lightning bolt (⚡) beside any line or the explosion (💥) for an entire region of code to generate a proposed optimization. Click on a proposed optimization to copy it to the clipboard.

You can click as many times as you like on the lightning bolt or explosion, and it will generate different suggested optimizations. Your mileage may vary, but in some cases, the suggestions are quite impressive (e.g., order-of-magnitude improvements).

Quick Start

Installing Scalene:

python3 -m pip install -U scalene

or

conda install -c conda-forge scalene

Using Scalene:

After installing Scalene, you can use Scalene at the command line, or as a Visual Studio Code extension.

First, install the Scalene extension from the VS Code Marketplace or by searching for it within VS Code by typing Command-Shift-X (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-X (Windows). Once that's installed, click Command-Shift-P or Ctrl-Shift-P to open the Command Palette. Then select "Scalene: AI-powered profiling..." (you can start typing Scalene and it will pop up if it's installed). Run that and, assuming your code runs for at least a second, a Scalene profile will appear in a webview.

Scalene uses a verb-based command structure with two main commands: run (to profile) and view (to display results).

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗