[uxcn]

The nginx threadpools aren't strictly for I/O. One of the other major issues TFA mentions is that plugins don't use epoll/kqueue, and they block (with all the associated performance costs).

The detail I apparently skipped is that uncached file reads aren't handled uniformly through epoll (which I'm surprised about). I don't see why files should be handled any differently than sockets. etc... in regard to non-blocking I/O using epoll.

Although, my issue is that everyone tends to look to methods starting with aio_ to do asynchronous I/O. Those are fairly bad interfaces (POSIX AIO) and inefficient (effectively threadpools). Using the nginx model with an epoll/kqueue event loop is a better architecture.