Node.js, fundamentally a single-threaded environment, handles operations that might require parallel execution through mechanisms like child processes and worker threads, rather than traditional child threads.
Child Processes
Node.js can spawn child processes using the child_process module. This module allows Node.js to execute other programs or scripts in separate processes, enabling parallel execution of tasks. Child processes run independently of the parent Node.js process and have their own memory space, which means they do not share state directly with the parent process. Communication between the parent and child processes can be achieved through inter-process communication (IPC), allowing data to be passed back and forth. The child_process module provides various methods to spawn these processes, such as exec, spawn, and fork[1][2][4][5].
Worker Threads
Introduced more recently in Node.js, the worker_threads module allows for running JavaScript in parallel on multiple threads, which is closer to the concept of traditional multithreading. Worker threads are useful for performing CPU-intensive JavaScript operations. Each worker thread has its own V8 instance and can execute JavaScript concurrently with the main thread. Unlike child processes, worker threads can share memory using SharedArrayBuffers, which allows them to communicate with each other more efficiently than through IPC. This makes worker threads suitable for tasks that require shared memory access and high performance[1][3][7][8].
