Why should one avoid doing CPU-intensive task using an event loop?

Question

In a tutorial I've read that one should you Node's event-loop approach mainly for I/O intensive tasks. Like reading from hard disk or using network. But not for CPU-intensive task.

What's the concrete reason for the quoted statements?

Or the otherwayaround asked:

What would happen if you occupy Node.js with CPU-intesive tasks to do?

It would block the event loop and your application would become non-responsive. — Bergi
– Bergi, Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 6:47

Ashish · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-16 06:04:36Z

3

Node uses a small number of threads to handle many clients. In Node there are two types of threads: one Event Loop (aka the main loop, main thread, event thread, etc.), and a pool of k Workers in a Worker Pool (aka the threadpool).

If a thread is taking a long time to execute a callback (Event Loop) or a task (Worker), we call it "blocked". While a thread is blocked working on behalf of one client, it cannot handle requests from any other clients.

You can read more about it in official nodejs guide

answered Apr 16, 2019 at 6:04

Ashish

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