Introduction

Piscina.js is a powerful Node.js worker pool library that allows you to efficiently run CPU-intensive tasks in parallel using worker threads. It provides a simple API for offloading computationally expensive tasks to a pool of worker threads, thereby improving the performance and scalability of your Node.js applications.

Why Piscina?

In the early days of worker threads, the Node.js core team encountered an issue where a user's application was spinning up thousands of concurrent worker threads, leading to performance issues. While this specific issue helped identify a minor memory leak in the worker implementation, it highlighted a broader problem: the misuse of worker threads due to a lack of understanding.

While worker threads have matured and their usage has become more widespread, there is still a need for better examples and education around their correct usage. This realization led to the creation of Piscina, an open-source project sponsored by NearForm Research, focused on providing guidance and best practices for using worker threads in Node.js applications.

With worker threads now a well-established feature in Node.js, Piscina aims to bridge the gap between the potential of worker threads and their practical implementation.

Key features

✔ Fast communication between threads
✔ Covers both fixed-task and variable-task scenarios
✔ Supports flexible pool sizes
✔ Proper async tracking integration
✔ Tracking statistics for run and wait times
✔ Cancellation Support
✔ Supports enforcing memory resource limits
✔ Supports CommonJS, ESM, and TypeScript
✔ Custom task queues
✔ Optional CPU scheduling priorities on Linux