- High Resource Use: Creating an OS thread requires significant memory and CPU resources, including a large stack size for each thread.
- Expensive Context Switching: Switching between threads involves saving and loading thread states, which is computationally expensive and slow.
- Kernel Mode Transitions: OS threads need to frequently transition between user and kernel modes, adding overhead to thread operations.
- Scheduling Overhead: The OS has to manage and schedule all threads, and as the number of threads grows, this overhead increases.
- Complex Synchronization: Managing access to shared resources between multiple threads requires complex synchronization, adding further overhead and potential for inefficiencies.
- Lightweight: Virtual threads are much lighter than OS threads, allowing for the creation of thousands of threads with minimal memory and CPU overhead.
- Efficient Task Management: They make it easy to handle many tasks concurrently, improving application performance and scalability.
- Simpler Code: Developers can write straightforward, synchronous code without worrying about complex thread management.
- Low Resource Usage: Virtual threads use fewer system resources, reducing the cost of context switching and memory consumption.
- Parking Feature: Virtual threads can be parked (paused) and unparked (resumed) efficiently without consuming OS resources, allowing them to wait for tasks like I/O operations without blocking system threads.
- Integration with Fork/Join: Virtual threads integrate well with the fork/join framework, enabling efficient parallel processing and workload distribution, further enhancing performance in concurrent applications.