Napa.js: a multi-threaded JavaScript runtime

Napa.js

Napa.js is a multi-threaded JavaScript runtime built on V8, which was originally designed to develop highly iterative services with non-compromised performance in Bing. As it evolves, we find it useful to complement Node.js in CPU-bound tasks, with the capability of executing JavaScript in multiple V8 isolates and communicating between them. Napa.js is exposed as a Node.js module, while it can also be embedded in a host process without Node.js dependency.

Installation

Install the latest stable version:

npm install napajs

Other options can be found in Build Napa.js.

Quick Start

const napa = require('napajs');
const zone1 = napa.zone.create('zone1', { workers: 4 });

// Broadcast code to all 4 workers in 'zone1'.
zone1.broadcast('console.log("hello world");');

// Execute an anonymous function in any worker thread in 'zone1'.
zone1.execute(
    (text) => text, 
    ['hello napa'])
    .then((result) => {
        console.log(result.value);
    });

More examples:

• Estimate PI in parallel
• Max sub-matrix of 1s with layered parallelism
• Parallel Quick Sort
• Recursive Fibonacci with multiple JavaScript threads
• Synchronized loading

Features

• Multi-threaded JavaScript runtime.
• Node.js compatible module architecture with NPM support.
• API for object transportation, object sharing and synchronization across JavaScript threads.
• API for pluggable logging, metric and memory allocator.
• Distributed as a Node.js module, as well as supporting embed scenarios.

Documentation

• Napa.js Home
• API Reference
• FAQ

Contribute

You can contribute to Napa.js in following ways:

• Report issues and help us verify fixes as they are checked in.
• Review the source code changes.
• Contribute to core module compatibility with Node.
• Contribute bug fixes.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

License

Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the MIT License.