Node.js on multi-core machines

Question

Node.js looks interesting, BUT I must miss something - isn\'t Node.js tuned only to run on a single process and thread?

Then how does it scale for m

Answer 1

Ryan Dahl answers this question in the tech talk he gave at Google last summer. To paraphrase, "just run multiple node processes and use something sensible to allow them to communicate. e.g. sendmsg()-style IPC or traditional RPC".

If you want to get your hands dirty right away, check out the spark2 Forever module. It makes spawning multiple node processes trivially easy. It handles setting up port sharing, so they can each accept connections to the same port, and also auto-respawning if you want to make sure a process is restarted if/when it dies.

UPDATE - 10/11/11: Consensus in the node community seems to be that Cluster is now the preferred module for managing multiple node instances per machine. Forever is also worth a look.