Continuations - Under the Covers #JVMLS

The podcast explores the implementation of continuations in the Hotspot VM, particularly in the context of virtual threads. It clarifies that virtual threads enhance throughput due to their sheer quantity, not faster context switching, though efficient context switching is crucial for minimizing CPU usage. The discussion covers the nature of continuations as non-reentrant, delimited, asymmetric, and multi-pronged, detailing their run and yield methods. It introduces concepts like "freezing" and "thawing" stack frames and the challenges of managing references within these frames for garbage collection. The podcast highlights the "lazy copy" approach and the use of "stack chunks" to optimize memory usage and performance, explaining how these chunks interact with the garbage collector to achieve efficient memory management.