asynchronous vs non-blocking

Question

What is the difference between asynchronous and non-blocking calls? Also between blocking and synchronous calls (with examples please)?

Answer 1

They differ in spelling only. There is no difference in what they refer to. To be technical you could say they differ in emphasis. Non blocking refers to control flow(it doesn't block.) Asynchronous refers to when the event\data is handled(not synchronously.)

Answer 2

synchronous / asynchronous is to describe the relation between two modules.
blocking / non-blocking is to describe the situation of one module.

An example:
Module X: "I".
Module Y: "bookstore".
X asks Y: do you have a book named "c++ primer"?

1) blocking: before Y answers X, X keeps waiting there for the answer. Now X (one module) is blocking. X and Y are two threads or two processes or one thread or one process? we DON'T know.

2) non-blocking: before Y answers X, X just leaves there and do other things. X may come back every two minutes to check if Y has finished its job? Or X won't come back until Y calls him? We don't know. We only know that X can do other things before Y finishes its job. Here X (one module) is non-blocking. X and Y are two threads or two processes or one process? we DON'T know. BUT we are sure that X and Y couldn't be one thread.

3) synchronous: before Y answers X, X keeps waiting there for the answer. It means that X can't continue until Y finishes its job. Now we say: X and Y (two modules) are synchronous. X and Y are two threads or two processes or one thread or one process? we DON'T know.

4) asynchronous: before Y answers X, X leaves there and X can do other jobs. X won't come back until Y calls him. Now we say: X and Y (two modules) are asynchronous. X and Y are two threads or two processes or one process? we DON'T know. BUT we are sure that X and Y couldn't be one thread.

Please pay attention on the two bold-sentences above. Why does the bold-sentence in the 2) contain two cases whereas the bold-sentence in the 4) contains only one case? This is a key of the difference between non-blocking and asynchronous.

Here is a typical example about non-blocking & synchronous:

// thread X
while (true)
{
    msg = recv(Y, NON_BLOCKING_FLAG);
    if (msg is not empty)
    {
        break;
    }
    sleep(2000); // 2 sec
}

// thread Y
// prepare the book for X
send(X, book);

You can see that this design is non-blocking (you can say that most of time this loop does something nonsense but in CPU's eyes, X is running, which means that X is non-blocking) whereas X and Y are synchronous because X can't continue do anything (X can't jump out of the loop) until it gets the book from Y.
Normally in this case, make X blocking is much better because non-blocking spends much resource for a stupid loop. But this example is good to help you understand the fact: non-blocking doesn't mean asynchronous.

The four words do make us confused easily, what we should remember is that the four words serve for the design of architecture. Learning about how to design a good architecture is the only way to distinguish them.

For example, we may design such a kind of architecture:

// Module X = Module X1 + Module X2
// Module X1
while (true)
{
    msg = recv(many_other_modules, NON_BLOCKING_FLAG);
    if (msg is not null)
    {
        if (msg == "done")
        {
            break;
        }
        // create a thread to process msg
    }
    sleep(2000); // 2 sec
}
// Module X2
broadcast("I got the book from Y");


// Module Y
// prepare the book for X
send(X, book);

In the example here, we can say that

• X1 is non-blocking
• X1 and X2 are synchronous
• X and Y are asynchronous

If you need, you can also describe those threads created in X1 with the four words.

The more important things are: when do we use synchronous instead of asynchronous? when do we use blocking instead of non-blocking?

Why is Nginx non-blocking? Why is Apache blocking?

To make a good choice, you must analyze your need and test the performance of different architectures. There is no such an architecture that is suitable for various of needs.

Answer 3

Non-blocking: This function won't wait while on the stack.

Asynchronous: Work may continue on behalf of the function call after that call has left the stack

Answer 4

Synchronous is defined as happening at the same time.

Asynchronous is defined as not happening at the same time.

This is what causes the first confusion. Synchronous is actually what is known as parallel. While asynchronous is sequential, do this, then do that.

Now the whole problem is about modeling an asynchronous behaviour, because you've got some operation that needs the response of another before it can begin. Thus it's a coordination problem, how will you know that you can now start that operation?

The simplest solution is known as blocking.

Blocking is when you simply choose to wait for the other thing to be done and return you a response before moving on to the operation that needed it.

So if you need to put butter on toast, and thus you first need to toast the bred. The way you'd coordinate them is that you'd first toast the bred, then stare endlessly at the toaster until it pops the toast, and then you'd proceed to put butter on them.

It's the simplest solution, and works very well. There's no real reason not to use it, unless you happen to also have other things you need to be doing which don't require coordination with the operations. For example, doing some dishes. Why wait idle staring at the toaster constantly for the toast to pop, when you know it'll take a bit of time, and you could wash a whole dish while it finishes?

That's where two other solutions known respectively as non-blocking and asynchronous come into play.

Non-blocking is when you choose to do other unrelated things while you wait for the operation to be done. Checking back on the availability of the response as you see fit.

So instead of looking at the toaster for it to pop. You go and wash a whole dish. And then you peek at the toaster to see if the toasts have popped. If they havn't, you go wash another dish, checking back at the toaster between each dish. When you see the toasts have popped, you stop washing the dishes, and instead you take the toast and move on to putting butter on them.

Having to constantly check on the toasts can be annoying though, imagine the toaster is in another room. In between dishes you waste your time going to that other room to check on the toast.

Here comes asynchronous.

Asynchronous is when you choose to do other unrelated things while you wait for the operation to be done. Instead of checking on it though, you delegate the work of checking to something else, could be the operation itself or a watcher, and you have that thing notify and possibly interupt you when the response is availaible so you can proceed to the other operation that needed it.

Its a weird terminology. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since all these solutions are ways to create asynchronous coordination of dependent tasks. That's why I prefer to call it evented.

So for this one, you decide to upgrade your toaster so it beeps when the toasts are done. You happen to be constantly listening, even while you are doing dishes. On hearing the beep, you queue up in your memory that as soon as you are done washing your current dish, you'll stop and go put the butter on the toast. Or you could choose to interupt the washing of the current dish, and deal with the toast right away.

If you have trouble hearing the beep, you can have your partner watch the toaster for you, and come tell you when the toast is ready. Your partner can itself choose any of the above three strategies to coordinate its task of watching the toaster and telling you when they are ready.

On a final note, it's good to understand that while non-blocking and async (or what I prefer to call evented) do allow you to do other things while you wait, you don't have too. You can choose to constantly loop on checking the status of a non-blocking call, doing nothing else. That's often worse than blocking though (like looking st the toaster, then away, then back at it until its done), so a lot of non-blocking APIs allow you to transition into a blocking mode from it. For evented, you can just wait idle until you are notified. The downside in that case is that adding the notification was complex and potentially costly to begin with. You had to buy a new toaster with beep functionality, or convince your partner to watch it for you.

And one more thing, you need to realize the trade offs all three provide. One is not obviously better than the others. Think of my example. If your toaster is so fast, you won't have time to wash a dish, not even begin washing it, that's how fast your toaster is. Getting started on something else in that case is just a waste of time and effort. Blocking will do. Similarly, if washing a dish will take 10 times longer then the toasting. You have to ask yourself what's more important to get done? The toast might get cold and hard by that time, not worth it, blocking will also do. Or you should pick faster things to do while you wait. There's more obviously, but my answer is already pretty long, my point is you need to think about all that, and the complexities of implementing each to decide if its worth it, and if it'll actually improve your throughout or performance.

Edit:

Even though this is already long, I also want it to be complete, so I'll add two more points.

1) There also commonly exists a fourth model known as multiplexed. This is when while you wait for one task, you start another, and while you wait for both, you start one more, and so on, until you've got many tasks all started and then, you wait idle, but on all of them. So as soon as any is done, you can proceed with handling its response, and then go back to waiting for the others. It's known as multiplexed, because while you wait, you need to check each task one after the other to see if they are done, ad vitam, until one is. It's a bit of an extension on top of normal non-blocking.

In our example it would be like starting the toaster, then the dishwasher, then the microwave, etc. And then waiting on any of them. Where you'd check the toaster to see if it's done, if not, you'd check the dishwasher, if not, the microwave, and around again.

2) Even though I believe it to be a big mistake, synchronous is often used to mean one thing at a time. And asynchronous many things at a time. Thus you'll see synchronous blocking and non-blocking used to refer to blocking and non-blocking. And asynchronous blocking and non-blocking used to refer to multiplexed and evented.

I don't really understand how we got there. But when it comes to IO and Computation, synchronous and asynchronous often refer to what is better known as non-overlapped and overlapped. That is, asynchronous means that IO and Computation are overlapped, aka, happening concurrently. While synchronous means they are not, thus happening sequentially. For synchronous non-blocking, that would mean you don't start other IO or Computation, you just busy wait and simulate a blocking call. I wish people stopped misusing syncronous and asynchronous like that. So I'm not encouraging it.

Answer 5

Blocking call: Control returns only when the call completes.

Non blocking call: Control returns immediately. Later OS somehow notifies the process that the call is complete.

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Synchronous program: A program which uses Blocking calls. In order not to freeze during the call it must have 2 or more threads (that's why it's called Synchronous - threads are running synchronously).

Asynchronous program: A program which uses Non blocking calls. It can have only 1 thread and still remain interactive.

Answer 6

A nonblocking call returns immediately with whatever data are available: the full number of bytes requested, fewer, or none at all.

An asynchronous call requests a transfer that will be performed in its whole(entirety) but will complete at some future time.