For those interested in how PyPy works, I highly recommend watching these presentations by Dave Beazley about RPython:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjnRLG8ATn4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkt_BtR9Kzk

Also, for those going, I believe he'll be talking about this in his keynote at PyCon.

Well this is interesting.

That's a question I submitted while in the process of researching my final paper for Alfred Aho's advanced compilers course at Columbia University. In the paper, I discuss why compiling Python to C is difficult, and present some of the process that PyPy uses to make the translation happen for RPython.

Here's the link:

http://www.scribd.com/thejfasi/d/83851011-COMS-6998-Final-Pa...

EDIT: The title of this post is slightly misleading. It doesn't discuss how PyPy works, just how the translation framework happens.

On the topic, there was an article about using RPython to quickly implement PyPy-like JIT VMs. http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/fast_enough_v...