PyCPUID 0.3

CPUID powered by Python.

Introduction

PyCPUID reads the information available from the CPUID assembly instruction and makes it available to any Python program.

It could be used to decide on some codepath based on whether the target computer supports SSE2.

import pycpuid
if pycpuid.HAS_SSE2:
    import foobar_sse2 as foobar
else:
    import foobar

It is not the goal of PyCPUID to provide a full report of all CPUID information available. It’s merely a way to get raw access to the machine instruction from within Python. Some functions are provided for translation to something human readable, but this is far from complete. Full details on how to interpret the raw data can be found in the application notes of Intel and AMD.

Installation

Package requires pip for installation.

pip install PyCPUID

If you’re doing this on Windows you’ll need to make sure you have a C++ compiler installed and properly configured.

Using PyCPUID

There’s not much to it, really. PyCPUID is just a bunch of module constants. Just import the module and access the constants. The HAS_FOOBAR constants are Boolean flags to indicate whether the feature is available. The function features() returns a list of all the available features as strings. There are some other functions like vendor() and brand_string() you can use to identify the CPU.

import pycpuid
print "has SSE2:", pycpuid.HAS_SSE2
print "all availabe features:", pycpuid.features()
print "brand string:", pycpuid.brand_string()

Get the Code

• https://github.com/FlightDataServices/PyCPUID

Changes

0.3

• Should now compile on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

• Updated packaging and now uses SetupFixer.

• Added documentation based on the original text from Bram.

0.2

• The feature abbreviations now resemble the ones in the Intel and AMD documentation.

• features() is now a function and returns a list of strings, instead of being a comma separated string.

• Added some functions like vendor() and brand_string() as handy wrappers.

• PyCPUID is now a combination of a pure python module pycpuid.py and an extension _pycpuid.c. The extension module is only responsible for the actual cpuid call. All the fancy wrapper bits are implemented in Python.

• Added gcc support. Using __cpuid intrinsic on MSVC to support x64.

0.1

• Initial release.

To Do

• Hopefully, nothing.

Credits

PyCPUID was written by Bram de Greve <[e-mail]> and is maintained by Flight Data Services, Ltd <[e-mail]>.