piscina

What is piscina?

Piscina is a fast, efficient Node.js Worker Threads pool implementation. It allows you to offload tasks to worker threads, helping to manage CPU-intensive tasks in a Node.js environment without blocking the main thread. This can significantly improve the performance of your Node.js applications, especially for tasks that are computationally expensive or I/O bound.

What are piscina's main functionalities?

Executing a Task

This demonstrates how to create a Piscina pool and execute a task in a worker thread. The task is defined in a separate file ('worker.js'), and the main thread communicates with the worker asynchronously, awaiting the result.

const Piscina = require('piscina');
const path = require('path');

const piscina = new Piscina({
  filename: path.resolve(__dirname, 'worker.js')
});

(async () => {
  const result = await piscina.run({ a: 1, b: 2 });
  console.log(result); // Output from your worker task
})();

Dynamic Task Module

This example shows how to run a dynamic task directly passed as a function to Piscina, without the need for a separate module file. This can be useful for small, on-the-fly tasks.

const Piscina = require('piscina');
const piscina = new Piscina();

(async () => {
  const result = await piscina.runTask({
    task: () => 'Hello from the worker!'
  });
  console.log(result); // 'Hello from the worker!'
})();

Other packages similar to piscina

workerpool

Workerpool is an npm package that offers a similar functionality to Piscina by providing a pool of workers to run JavaScript functions in parallel, in separate processes or threads. Compared to Piscina, workerpool has a simpler API but might not offer the same level of performance optimizations for Node.js Worker Threads.

threads

Threads.js is another alternative that simplifies working with Web Workers and Worker Threads in JavaScript. It provides a high-level API for spawning new threads and communicating with them. While Threads.js focuses on ease of use and compatibility between web and Node.js environments, Piscina is more focused on high-performance and efficient task scheduling in Node.js specifically.

README

piscina - the node.js worker pool

• ✔ 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
• ✔ Cancelation Support
• ✔ Supports enforcing memory resource limits
• ✔ Supports CommonJS and ESM

Written in TypeScript.

For Node.js 12.x and higher.

MIT Licensed.

Piscina API

Example

In main.js:

const Piscina = require('piscina');

const piscina = new Piscina({
  filename: path.resolve(__dirname, 'worker.js')
});

(async function() {
  const result = await piscina.runTask({ a: 4, b: 6 });
  console.log(result);  // Prints 10
})();

In worker.js:

module.exports = ({ a, b }) => {
  return a + b;
};

The worker may also be an async function or may return a Promise:

const { promisify } = require('util');
const sleep = promisify(setTimeout);

module.exports = async ({ a, b } => {
  // Fake some async activity
  await sleep(100);
  return a + b;
})

ESM is also supported for both Piscina and workers:

import { Piscina } from 'piscina';

const piscina = new Piscina({
  // The URL must be a file:// URL
  filename: new URL('./worker.mjs', import.meta.url).href
});

(async function () {
  const result = await piscina.runTask({ a: 4, b: 6 });
  console.log(result); // Prints 10
})();

In worker.mjs:

export default ({ a, b }) => {
  return a + b;
};

Cancelable Tasks

Submitted tasks may be canceled using either an AbortController or an EventEmitter:

'use strict';

const Piscina = require('piscina');
const { AbortController } = require('abort-controller');
const { resolve } = require('path');

const piscina = new Piscina({
  filename: resolve(__dirname, 'worker.js')
});

(async function() {
  const abortController = new AbortController();
  try {
    const task = piscina.runTask({ a: 4, b: 6 }, abortController.signal);
    abortController.abort();
    await task;
  } catch (err) {
    console.log('The task was canceled');
  }
})();

To use AbortController, you will need to npm i abort-controller (or yarn add abort-controller).

Alternatively, any EventEmitter that emits an 'abort' event may be used as an abort controller:

'use strict';

const Piscina = require('piscina');
const EventEmitter = require('events');
const { resolve } = require('path');

const piscina = new Piscina({
  filename: resolve(__dirname, 'worker.js')
});

(async function() {
  const ee = new EventEmitter();
  try {
    const task = piscina.runTask({ a: 4, b: 6 }, ee);
    ee.emit('abort');
    await task;
  } catch (err) {
    console.log('The task was canceled');
  }
})();

Backpressure

When the maxQueue option is set, once the Piscina queue is full, no additional tasks may be submitted until the queue size falls below the limit. The 'drain' event may be used to receive notification when the queue is empty and all tasks have been submitted to workers for processing.

Example: Using a Node.js stream to feed a Piscina worker pool:

'use strict';

const { resolve } = require('path');
const Pool = require('../..');

const pool = new Pool({
  filename: resolve(__dirname, 'worker.js'),
  maxQueue: 'auto'
});

const stream = getStreamSomehow();
stream.setEncoding('utf8');

pool.on('drain', () => {
  if (stream.isPaused()) {
    console.log('resuming...', counter, pool.queueSize);
    stream.resume();
  }
});

stream
  .on('data', (data) => {
    pool.runTask(data);
    if (pool.queueSize === pool.options.maxQueue) {
      console.log('pausing...', counter, pool.queueSize);
      stream.pause();
    }
  })
  .on('error', console.error)
  .on('end', () => {
    console.log('done');
  });

Additional Examples

Additional examples can be found in the GitHub repo at https://github.com/jasnell/piscina/tree/master/examples

Class: Piscina

Piscina works by creating a pool of Node.js Worker Threads to which one or more tasks may be dispatched. Each worker thread executes a single exported function defined in a separate file. Whenever a task is dispatched to a worker, the worker invokes the exported function and reports the return value back to Piscina when the function completes.

This class extends EventEmitter from Node.js.

Constructor: new Piscina([options])

• The following optional configuration is supported:
  • filename: (string | null) Provides the default source for the code that runs the tasks on Worker threads. This should be an absolute path or an absolute file:// URL to a file that exports a JavaScript function or async function as its default export or module.exports. ES modules are supported.
  • minThreads: (number) Sets the minimum number of threads that are always running for this thread pool. The default is based on the number of available CPUs.
  • maxThreads: (number) Sets the maximum number of threads that are running for this thread pool. The default is based on the number of available CPUs.
  • idleTimeout: (number) A timeout in milliseconds that specifies how long a Worker is allowed to be idle, i.e. not handling any tasks, before it is shut down. By default, this is immediate.
  • maxQueue: (number | string) The maximum number of tasks that may be scheduled to run, but not yet running due to lack of available threads, at a given time. By default, there is no limit. The special value 'auto' may be used to have Piscina calculate the maximum as the square of maxThreads. When 'auto' is used, the calculated maxQueue value may be found by checking the options.maxQueue property.
  • concurrentTasksPerWorker: (number) Specifies how many tasks can share a single Worker thread simultaneously. The default is 1. This generally only makes sense to specify if there is some kind of asynchronous component to the task. Keep in mind that Worker threads are generally not built for handling I/O in parallel.
  • useAtomics: (boolean) Use the Atomics API for faster communication between threads. This is on by default.
  • resourceLimits: (object) See Node.js new Worker options
    • maxOldGenerationSizeMb: (number) The maximum size of each worker threads main heap in MB.
    • maxYoungGenerationSizeMb: (number) The maximum size of a heap space for recently created objects.
    • codeRangeSizeMb: (number) The size of a pre-allocated memory range used for generated code.
  • env: (object) If set, specifies the initial value of process.env inside the worker threads. See Node.js new Worker options for details.
  • argv: (any[]) List of arguments that will be stringified and appended to process.argv in the worker. See Node.js new Worker options for details.
  • execArgv: (string[]) List of Node.js CLI options passed to the worker. See Node.js new Worker options for details.
  • workerData: (any) Any JavaScript value that can be cloned and made available as require('piscina').workerData. See Node.js new Worker options for details. Unlike regular Node.js Worker Threads, workerData must not specify any value requiring a transferList. This is because the workerData will be cloned for each pooled worker.

Use caution when setting resource limits. Setting limits that are too low may result in the Piscina worker threads being unusable.

Method: runTask(task[, transferList][, filename][, abortSignal])

Schedules a task to be run on a Worker thread.

• task: Any value. This will be passed to the function that is exported from filename.
• transferList: An optional lists of objects that is passed to [postMessage()] when posting task to the Worker, which are transferred rather than cloned.
• filename: Optionally overrides the filename option passed to the constructor for this task. If no filename was specified to the constructor, this is mandatory.
• abortSignal: An [AbortSignal][] instance. If passed, this can be used to cancel a task. If the task is already running, the corresponding Worker thread will be stopped. (More generally, any EventEmitter or EventTarget that emits 'abort' events can be passed here.) Abortable tasks cannot share threads regardless of the concurrentTasksPerWorker options.

This returns a Promise for the return value of the (async) function call made to the function exported from filename. If the (async) function throws an error, the returned Promise will be rejected with that error. If the task is aborted, the returned Promise is rejected with an error as well.

Method: destroy()

Stops all Workers and rejects all Promises for pending tasks.

This returns a Promise that is fulfilled once all threads have stopped.

Event: 'error'

An 'error' event is emitted by instances of this class when:

• Uncaught exceptions occur inside Worker threads that do not currently handle tasks.
• Unexpected messages are sent from from Worker threads.

All other errors are reported by rejecting the Promise returned from runTask(), including rejections reported by the handler function itself.

Event: 'drain'

A 'drain' event is emitted whenever the queueSize reaches 0.

Property: completed (readonly)

The current number of completed tasks.

Property: options (readonly)

A copy of the options that are currently being used by this instance. This object has the same properties as the options object passed to the constructor.

Property: runTime (readonly)

A histogram summary object summarizing the collected run times of completed tasks. All values are expressed in milliseconds.

• runTime.average {number} The average run time of all tasks
• runTime.mean {number} The mean run time of all tasks
• runTime.stddev {number} The standard deviation of collected run times
• runTime.min {number} The fastest recorded run time
• runTime.max {number} The slowest recorded run time

All properties following the pattern p{N} where N is a number (e.g. p1, p99) represent the percentile distributions of run time observations. For example, p99 is the 99th percentile indicating that 99% of the observed run times were faster or equal to the given value.

{
  average: 1880.25,
  mean: 1880.25,
  stddev: 1.93,
  min: 1877,
  max: 1882.0190887451172,
  p0_001: 1877,
  p0_01: 1877,
  p0_1: 1877,
  p1: 1877,
  p2_5: 1877,
  p10: 1877,
  p25: 1877,
  p50: 1881,
  p75: 1881,
  p90: 1882,
  p97_5: 1882,
  p99: 1882,
  p99_9: 1882,
  p99_99: 1882,
  p99_999: 1882
}

Property: threads (readonly)

An Array of the Worker instances used by this pool.

Property: queueSize (readonly)

The current number of tasks waiting to be assigned to a Worker thread.

Property: waitTime (readonly)

A histogram summary object summarizing the collected times tasks spent waiting in the queue. All values are expressed in milliseconds.

• waitTime.average {number} The average wait time of all tasks
• waitTime.mean {number} The mean wait time of all tasks
• waitTime.stddev {number} The standard deviation of collected wait times
• waitTime.min {number} The fastest recorded wait time
• waitTime.max {number} The longest recorded wait time

All properties following the pattern p{N} where N is a number (e.g. p1, p99) represent the percentile distributions of wait time observations. For example, p99 is the 99th percentile indicating that 99% of the observed wait times were faster or equal to the given value.

{
  average: 1880.25,
  mean: 1880.25,
  stddev: 1.93,
  min: 1877,
  max: 1882.0190887451172,
  p0_001: 1877,
  p0_01: 1877,
  p0_1: 1877,
  p1: 1877,
  p2_5: 1877,
  p10: 1877,
  p25: 1877,
  p50: 1881,
  p75: 1881,
  p90: 1882,
  p97_5: 1882,
  p99: 1882,
  p99_9: 1882,
  p99_99: 1882,
  p99_999: 1882
}

Static property: isWorkerThread (readonly)

Is true if this code runs inside a Piscina threadpool as a Worker.

Static property: version (readonly)

Provides the current version of this library as a semver string.

Current Limitations (Things we're working on / would love help with)

• Improved Documentation
• More examples
• Benchmarks

Performance Notes

Workers are generally optimized for offloading synchronous, compute-intensive operations off the main Node.js event loop thread. While it is possible to perform asynchronous operations and I/O within a Worker, the performance advantages of doing so will be minimal.

Specifically, it is worth noting that asynchronous operations within Node.js, including I/O such as file system operations or CPU-bound tasks such as crypto operations or compression algorithms, are already performed in parallel by Node.js and libuv on a per-process level. This means that there will be little performance impact on moving such async operations into a Piscina worker (see examples/scrypt for example).

Piscina provides the ability to configure the minimum and maximum number of worker threads active in the pool, as well as set limits on the number of tasks that may be queued up waiting for a free worker. It is important to note that setting the maxQueue size too high relative to the number of worker threads can have a detrimental impact on performance and memory usage. Setting the maxQueue size too small can also be problematic as doing so could cause your worker threads to become idle and be shutdown. Our testing has shown that a maxQueue size of approximately the square of the maximum number of threads is generally sufficient and performs well for many cases, but this will vary depending on your workload. It will be important to test and benchmark your worker pools to ensure you've effectively balanced queue wait times, memory usage, and worker pool utilization.

Release Notes

1.4.0

• Added maxQueue = 'auto' to autocalculate the maximum queue size.
• Added more examples, including an example of implementing a worker as a Node.js native addon.

1.3.0

• Added the 'drain' event

1.2.0

• Added support for ESM and file:// URLs
• Added env, argv, execArgv, and workerData options
• More examples

1.1.0

• Added support for Worker Thread resourceLimits

1.0.0

• Initial release!

The Team

• James M Snell [e-mail]
• Anna Henningsen [e-mail]
• Matteo Collina [e-mail]

Acknowledgements

Piscina development is sponsored by NearForm Research.