CODEWITHSUNDEEP
multithreadingweb-worker
glemiere
glemiere

Reputation: 5024

Do web workers work properly if the client only has a one core CPU?

Pure curiosity, I'm just wondering if there is any case where a webworker would manage to execute a separate thread if only one thread is available in the CPU, maybe with some virtualization, using the GPU?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1152

Answers (1)

Jimmy Breck-McKye
Jimmy Breck-McKye

Reputation: 3034

There seem to be two premises behind your question: firstly, that web workers use threads; and secondly that multiple threads require multiple cores. But neither is really true.

On the first: there’s no actual requirement that web workers be implemented with threads. User agents are free to use processes, threads or any “equivalent construct” [see the web worker specification]. They could use multitasking within a single thread if they wanted to. Web worker scripts are run concurrently but not necessarily parallel to browser JavaScript.

On the second: it’s quite possible for multiple threads to run on a single CPU. It works a lot like concurrent async functions do in single threaded JavaScript.

So yes, in answer to your question: web workers do run properly on a single core client. You will lose some of the performance benefits but the code will still behave as it would in a multi core system.

Upvotes: 5

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