Web Workers

Web Workers spec: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/workers.html

As of Nov 2015, the most up-to-date documentation is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i3IA3TG00rpQ7MKlpNFYUF6EfLcV01_Cv3IYG_DjF7M/edit

Contents below are obsolete!

As of Nov 2014, the most up-to-date documentation was: https://docs.google.com/a/chromium.org/document/d/1NYMYf-_P_K2iPKlSGyv5ou_x0yL_4IRwt-DPOYqRb0s/edit#

As of Oct 2013, Blink/Chromium's multi-process architecture Web Workers (Dedicated and Shared Worker) was implemented as follows:

• Dedicated Worker
  • Runs in the same renderer process as its parent document, but on a different thread (see Source/core/workers/WorkerThread.* in blink for details). Note that it’s NOT the chromium’s worker process thread implemented in content/worker/worker_thread.*.
  • In Chromium the renderer process’s main thread is implemented by content/renderer/render_thread_impl.*, while the Blink’s worker thread does NOT have corresponding message_loop/thread in chromium (yet). You can use webkit_glue::WorkerTaskRunner (webkit/child/worker_task_runner.*) to post tasks to the Blink’s worker threads in chromium.
  • The embedder’s platform code in Chromium for Dedicated Worker is /content/renderer/* (in addition to content/child/*), but NOT content/worker/*.
  • Platform APIs are accessible in Worker contexts via WebKit::Platform::current(), and it’s implemented in RendererWebKitPlatformSupport (content/renderer/renderer_webkitplatformsupport_impl.cc) in Chromium (as in the case for regular document contexts).
  • Note that to call Platform APIs from Worker contexts it needs to be implemented in a thread-safe way in the embedder code (e.g. do not lazily create a shared object without lock), or the worker code should explicitly relay the call onto the renderer’s main thread in Blink (e.g. by WTF::callOnMainThread).
• Shared Worker (the following was valid until April 2014)
  • Runs in its own separate process called worker process and is connected to multiple renderer processes via the browser process. Shared Worker also runs in its own worker thread.
  • In Chromium the worker process’s main thread is implemented by content/worker/worker_thread.* (note that this is NOT the worker thread you refer in Blink!!). As well as in Dedicated Workers the Blink’s worker thread does not have corresponding message_loop/thread in chromium.
  • The embedder’s platform code in Chromium for Shared Worker is /content/worker/* (in addition to content/child/*).
  • Platform APIs are accessible in Worker contexts via WebKit::Platform::current(), and it’s implemented in WorkerWebKitPlatformSupportImpl (content/worker/worker_webkitplatformsupport_impl.cc) in Chromium. As well as for Dedicated Worker, to use a platform API in Worker contexts the API needs to be implemented in a thread-safe way in the embedder code, or Blink-side code should explicitly relay the platform API access onto the main thread by WTF::callOnMainThread.