[wcummings]

There's support for "dirty NIFs" in new versions, R19 will make it the default. Dirty NIFs allow for long running NIFs managed by the VM. In older versions, you can use nif_create_thread to create background workers, and your NIF will only block for as long as it takes to acquire a lock for your queue.

You can also use c nodes (or the JVM interface, which is pretty similar to c nodes I think).

... You can also use ports which define an interface for communicating with external processes.

The world is your oyster!