Fibers in Java (Yes fibers !!!)

saurabh chatterjee — Sun, 27 Jan 2019 06:49:14 +0000

Fiber is upcoming feature in Java which will offer a light weight alternative to Threads . However the question is why fibers ,one word answer to it is “money”.

Each thread created by Java corresponds to operating system thread. Creating Threads is costly as well as context switching to another thread is quite expensive. As a result in most applications thread gets blocked and servers remain underutilized. Java fibers on the other hand will be managed by JVM by its own scheduler .

If we see methods of Thread class vis-a-vis Fiber it will make the picture clearer.

Thread :
checkAccess() countStackFrames() getContextClassLoader() getId() getName() getPriority() getStackTrace() getState() getThreadGroup() getUncaughtExceptionHandler() interrupt() isAlive() isDaemon() isInterrupted() join() resume() run() setContextClassLoader() setDaemon() setName() setPriority() setUncaughtExceptionHandler() start() stop() suspend()

Fiber :
await() cancel() isAlive() isCancelled() schedule()

Creating and starting a fiber is quite straight forward

var fiber = new Fiber(() -> System.out.println("Hello from fiber"));
fiber.schedule();

In today’s cloud computing world where applications are billed on hourly basis reducing server underutilization is top most priority of application owners and fibers will certainly help them.

DEV Community: saurabh chatterjee

Fibers in Java (Yes fibers !!!)