New Python - 3.1 alpha 1 released; here it is running QP on a new development machine (actually a "virtual" server):

Python 3.1a1 / qp/2.1

Concurrency Level:      20
Time taken for tests:   2.136 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Requests per second:    4682.07 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       0.214 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          754.59 [Kbytes/sec] received

Python 2.6 / qp/2.1

Concurrency Level:      20
Time taken for tests:   1.540 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Requests per second:    6492.18 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       0.154 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          1033.42 [Kbytes/sec] received

Fast enough.