Yes higher core counts are more and more common, but the language has thirty years of single-threaded path-dependence. Lots of elements of it work the way they do because there was a GIL. I could be wrong, but I am skeptical that Python will ever be the best choice for high performance code. It's always worth improving the speed of code when you can, but more often than not you "get" something for going slower. I hope my worries are wrong and this is actually a free win!