CircuitPython Goes Turbo With Precompiled Functions

CircuitPython Turbo, a new project by Mikey Sklar built with help from Anthropic's Claude LLM, brings MicroPython-style 'native' and 'viper' compilation modes to CircuitPython, which previously only ran in interpreted mode. Native mode compiles instructions while keeping Python objects, giving roughly a 3x speedup, while viper mode requires declaring variable types and pointers but can yield 20x to 70x speedups depending on the workload. Adafruit's documentation demonstrates a Metro RP2040 board calculating the Mandelbrot set about 3x faster in Native mode and roughly 19.7x faster in Viper mode compared to normal Python bytecode. Inline assembly, present in upstream MicroPython, is still missing from CircuitPython Turbo.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/09/14/circuitpython-goes-turbo-with-precompiled-functions. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.