The asynchronous Lua support is provided in two fashions:

Lua Action: To create an independent Lua thread in response to an action, the user can add an 'async' parameter to any existing Lua script and it will automatically create and run that action outside of the main UI thread.

Lua Script There is a new Lua API call gre.thread_create() that takes a single parameter which is a function to execute. This function will be executed and scheduled to run in an independent thread of execution.

Threads are created using the system's underlying native operating system thread support. Operations are synchronized explicitly through locks in the Lua VM, however there is no explicit support for data synchronization (ie mutexes, condition variables)

The suggested communication pattern for inter-thread communication is to use Storyboard IO to inject event data into the system. This is similar to the idea behind LuaLanes or WebWorkers where inter-task communication is based on message passing.

Threads will be hard-terminated at exit. Clients should establish their own protocol where a soft shutdown is required to trigger any asynchronous threads to terminate.