At connex.io we use Google's Protocol Buffers quite heavily. An analysis of our system showed that the Python implementation of Protocol Buffers was a bottleneck. There was no solution available back in December so we started implementing a faster Python version ourselves.

The goal: Making it available to everyone.

A first version was announced to the Protocol Buffers mailing list on January 7th. We received some valuable feedback that we since have incorporated. Just on the verge of releasing it, Greplin "rained" on our parade by launching their own fast implementation called fast-python-pb. We could have leaned back and seen how this played out, yet we were still convinced that our own implementation, CyPB, is of value to the public. We therefore sat down and worked hard to make it useable by others.

So here it is: CyPB is a fast and lightweight Protocol Buffers decoder for Python that we release to the public under the new BSD license today.

Read more: http://blog.connex.io/introducing-cypb-improving-the-performance-of