I use akka for much if not all of my heavy lifting on the JVM. Admittedly, it's a little awkward sometimes, but if you make the right tasks non blocking (run it

I use akka for much if not all of my heavy lifting on the JVM. Admittedly, it's a little awkward sometimes, but if you make the right tasks non blocking (run it in a future), you would be surprised at the performance increase you can net.