Fiber

Category: Units of execution · Status: stub

One line: A coroutine with its own stack that is switched to explicitly — the building block several green-thread runtimes are made of.

Also called: stackful coroutine.

How it connects

flowchart LR
  n_coroutine["Coroutine"]
  n_fiber["Fiber"]
  n_fiber -->|is a| n_coroutine
  classDef center stroke-width:3px
  class n_fiber center
  classDef outside stroke-dasharray: 4 3
  class n_coroutine outside

• Is a kind of: Coroutine
• See also: Green threads and M:N scheduling

In each language

The operating system	Fibers ↗ in the Windows API; POSIX removed makecontext and swapcontext ↗ from the standard
Elsewhere	Ruby's Fiber ↗, and PHP's Fibers ↗ since PHP 8.1

Where to read more

• In the books: Concurrent Programming on Windows, Joe Duffy — ch. 9, 'Fibers'
• In the books: Asynchronous Programming in Rust, Carl Fredrik Samson — ch. 2, 'How Programming Languages Model Asynchronous Program Flow' → 'Fibers and green threads'
• In the books: Async JavaScript, Trevor Burnham — ch. A1, 'Tools for Taming JavaScript' → 'Node-Fibers'
• Reference: Wikipedia: Fiber (computer science) ↗