libuv has provided an async interface for io using a worker thread pool for a decade, no dependency on io_uring required. I guess the threadpool they mention that aiofiles uses is written in python, so it gives concurrency but retains the GIL, so no parallelism. Node's libuv async stuff moves all the work off the main thread into c/c++ land until results are ready, only when dealing with the completed data read event does it re-enter the NodeJS "GIL" JavaScript thread.

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hinkley 3 days ago | parent [-]

Libuv has had io_uring integration for almost 18 months if you’re not on an old kernel or old hardware.

They claim about an 8x improvement in speed.

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danudey 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

To be clear: libuv has had the ability to offload (some?) I/O operators to io_uring since v1.45.0, from 2023, and that's the 8x speed improvement. 2024 is when node.js seemed to enable (or rather, stop disabling) io_uring by default in its own usage of libuv.

	▲	hinkley 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah if you look at the libuv release history there’s been a lot of adding and subtracting since then. It’s clearly not all settled but there are chunks.

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jitl 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

that's great! just saying io_uring has never been a required dependency to write application logic that avoids blockage on reads.