Thread Communication

In a concurrent environment, threads often need to communicate with each other to exchange information or coordinate their actions. Thread communication plays a crucial role in achieving synchronization and ensuring the correct execution of concurrent programs.

There are several mechanisms for thread communication in JavaScript:

1. Shared Memory: Threads can communicate by sharing memory locations. They can read from and write to shared variables to exchange information. However, accessing shared memory concurrently can lead to data races and inconsistent results.

2. Message Passing: Message passing involves sending messages between threads to communicate. Each thread has its own message queue, and messages can be sent and received through the queue. This approach provides a safe and controlled way of communication between threads.

3. Synchronization Primitives: Synchronization primitives like locks, semaphores, and condition variables can be used for thread communication. These primitives allow threads to coordinate their actions and enforce order and synchronization.

Let's take a look at an example of thread communication using shared memory:

1let message = ''; // Shared memory variable
2
3function senderThread() {
4  message = 'Hello, receiver!';
5}
6
7function receiverThread() {
8  while (message === '') {
9    // Wait for a message
10  }
11
12  console.log(message);
13}
14
15// Start the threads
16senderThread();
17receiverThread();