How are akka actors implemented on underlying threads?

Question

Given an execution context and a thread pool, how are akka/scala actors scheduled/implemented on that?

Answer 1

On 'I was looking into something more like say you are given a thread pool of 10 threads and 50 actors spun off of it, how are so many actors handled by a batch of 10 threads?'

The exact behavior depends on the dispatcher and configuration. However, most dispatchers do basically something like this:

• Select an actor which has a non-empty mailbox
• That 'actor' is then dispatched to run on the executor
• Where messages are dequed and processed.
  • When possible, a few messages are dequed and processed one after another
  • After processing some messages (or none left), another actor is picked, to prevent starvation. (throughput parameter)
• Rise and repeat