I just published a NPM package that adds shared memory parallelism,
Transactional Memory, and fine-grained synchronization to Node:
GitHub: SyntheticSemantics/ems <https://github.com/SyntheticSemantics/ems>
NPM: ems <https://www.npmjs.org/package/ems> or just: npm install ems
It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it is effective for jobs
too large for one core but not large enough for a scalable cluster. The
programming and execution model is somewhere between OpenMP multitasking
and a Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) tools. It's built on Node's
existing fork mechanisms so all legacy code and packages and node
distributions work normally -- only Extended Memory Semantics (EMS) objects
are shared between threads.
-J
On Monday, February 18, 2013 6:29:28 AM UTC-8, RF wrote:
>
> It seems that my first question is answered (yes - threads-a-gogo - but
> without allowing shared mutable objects).
> My second question is possibly redundant, then, but whether or not this is
> a desirable feature would appear to be debatable.
>
> For what it's worth, I think having more choices is always a good thing,
> although I would not argue that a true multi-threaded solution should be
> integrated into Node core given it's nature.
> The W16 project, from what I understand, is an experiment that involves a
> modified V8 engine to allow multiple cores to be utilized where each core
> shares a single common event loop from which events are assigned and
> executed, using mutexes for synchronization issues.
>
> I think I've got what I needed to know.
> Thanks to all of you for the responses, in particular that blog post by
> Bruno was very informative.
>
> Regards,
> -Rob
>
> On Monday, 18 February 2013 00:15:48 UTC, RF wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm CS student who is new to Node, and I have two questions:
>>
>> 1. Is there currently an existing mechanism (e.g. module, core
>> functionality) that allows Node applications to spawn multiple threads
>> (to
>> take advantage of multiple cores for true parallelism) ?
>> 2. If not, would this be a desirable feature?
>>
>> My understanding is that Node applications use a single thread to handle
>> everything by queuing events on an event loop to be processed sequentially.
>> I also understand that this is the core feature that allows Node to grant
>> efficiency gains for specific types of applications, and is the (main?)
>> source of Node's popularity.
>>
>> Given this fact then (and assuming that it's correct), it would seem
>> counter-intuitive to enable multi-threaded functionality in Node when there
>> are other languages/frameworks available potentially more suited to
>> multi-threaded behavior.
>> However, an example use case that I'm thinking of is a situation whereby
>> an existing Node application needs to be adapted or extended with some
>> functionality that would benefit from true parallelism.
>> So, maybe 3 or 4 threads could be created that would handle 3 or 4 tasks
>> more efficiently than Node's existing sequential behavior, while still
>> taking advantage of Node's established execution model in other areas of
>> the application.
>>
>> I was thinking along the lines of creating a Node module that exposes an
>> interface for creating threads and supplying them with the necessary
>> function (and also some mechanisms for dealing with shared data concurrency
>> and consensus issues).
>> I have searched unsuccessfully through available resources in an attempt
>> to answer the above questions, so I'm hoping that someone can help me out.
>>
>> Regards,
>> -Rob
>>
>
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