More info:

From my wicked noarch RPM compiled in an i386 machine, installed into my
64 bit centos (same OS):

[rudd-o@tobey ~]$ python
Python 2.4.5 (#1, Mar 13 2009, 12:13:36)
[GCC 4.1.2 20071124 (Red Hat 4.1.2-42)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import wicked
>>> wicked.__file__
'/usr/lib/site-python/wicked/__init__.pyc'

Evidence that the compiled file is being not recompiled, and is being
used directly on import, even across architectures.

-------------

However, I have discovered that I cannot run the same pyc file across
interpreters, even though the py file would run, so I am stumped at
this.  The reason i am stumped is that I can find a
platform-independent, interpreter-independent dir (site-python), and a
platform-dependent, interpreter-dependent dir (site-packages), but NOT a
platform-independent, interpreter-dependent dir, which is the BIG issue
here if we want to at least avoid having to rebuild python packages for
different architectures with the SAME interpreter.

Ideas?  I am thirsty for more knowledge here and losing hope.