Are Java Virtual Threads the Future of Concurrency? Absolutely. Here's Why You Should Care.
If you're a Java developer, you already know: every line of code runs on a thread. Threads are the fundamental unit of scheduling and concurrency in any Java application.
Traditionally, developers have relied on multiple OS-level threads to handle concurrent tasks. For example, Spring Boot with embedded Tomcat comes configured with 200 threads by default, allowing it to process up to 200 concurrent requests. Sounds powerful, right?
But here’s the catch...
🧠 Why Traditional Threads Limit Scalability
Each request in a Java web application is processed by a dedicated OS thread. If each request takes 1 second, a 200-thread system can handle 200 requests per second — that’s your application throughput.
So, why not just add more threads?
Because OS threads are heavyweight:
Each thread consumes significant memory.
The OS has limits on how many threads can be created.
Managing thousands of threads leads to context switching overhead, degrading performance.
That’s where Java Virtual Threads come into play — a game-changing concurrency model introduced in Project Loom.