The psyco module speeds up arbitrary interpreted Python code
by compiling it on the fly.   This only works on Intel processors.

1. 
For example, test1(16) raises a polynomial to the power $16$.  This is
implemented (as of 2006-01-18) in pure Python, and is slow.  Exactly
the same calculation with psyco on, without changing a single line of
the SAGE libraries, takes <17 seconds instead of >19 seconds (on my
laptop).  So there is some slight benefit.  

2. test2 just involves summing squares of ints.  There is no speedup
with psyco., e.g., for test2(6).