Planned lessonMID-007-L02

Virtual threads explained

On This Lesson 4 topics

This lesson is planned. The outline below lists the topics it will cover. The full lesson has not been published yet.

In this lesson

describe how virtual threads work and when they help.

A virtual thread is a lightweight thread managed by the JVM, mounted on a small pool of carrier (platform) threads.
When it blocks on supported I/O, it unmounts and the carrier runs another virtual thread.
Cheap to create: one per task; do not pool them.
Create with Thread.ofVirtual().start(r) or Executors.newVirtualThreadPerTaskExecutor().
They help blocking I/O workloads; they do not make CPU work faster.

Draft outline details

java

try (var exec = Executors.newVirtualThreadPerTaskExecutor()) {
    suppliers.forEach(s -> exec.submit(() -> importPrices(s)));
}

Should you pool virtual threads?

Show answer

No; create one per task.

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