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Comment by giamma

You will still have to worry, too many virtual threads will imply too much context switching. However, virtual threads will be always interruptable on I/O, as they are not mapped to actual o.s. threads, but rather simulated by the JVM which will executed a number of instructions for each virtual thread.

This gives the chance to the JVM to use real threads more efficiently, avoiding that threads remain unused while waiting on I/O (e.g. a response from a stream). As soon as the JVM detects that a physical thread is blocked on I/O, a semaphore, a lock or anything, it will reallocate that physical thread to running a new virtual thread. This will reduce latency, context switch time (the switching is done by the JVM that already globally manages the memory of the Java process in its heap) and will avoid or at least largely reduce the chance that a real thread remains allocated but idle as it's blocked on I/O or something else.

parent giamma 2 years ago

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