🚀 How Does Folia Increase Performance on SMP Servers with Large Worlds?

If you are managing a SMP server (Survival Multiplayer) with many players and an extensive world, you know that performance can become a real challenge. Folia, a Paper variant developed by PaperMC, is designed to change that radically. For example, the 2b2t server before the creation of Folia could handle a maximum of 200 simultaneous players, but with the arrival of Folia it can handle 800 without issues.

🔧 What is Folia?

Folia is an experimental fork of Paper that introduces a parallel execution system based on regions (called Regionized Multithreading). This allows servers to fully leverage multi-core CPUs and handle many players simultaneously without lag.

🧠 How Does It Work?

🧩 Region Parallelization

• Folia divides the world into independent regions.
• Each region runs on its own thread if it does not interact with other regions.
• This allows multiple areas of the world to be simulated at the same time.

📌 For example: If you have 100 players spread across the map, each in different chunks, Folia can simulate dozens or hundreds of these chunks in parallel, something impossible with traditional Paper (which only uses one main thread for everything).

💥 What Benefits Does It Bring for SMP with Large Worlds?

✅ Real Scalability

• More cores = more active players without TPS drops.
• Ideal for servers with huge maps or many players exploring at the same time.

✅ Reduction of "ticking lag"

• Fewer processing queues for simultaneously loaded chunks.
• Ticks are not delayed by events in other areas of the world.

✅ Better use of modern hardware

• Modern CPUs like Ryzen 9 (our dedicated servers) have 16 or more cores: Folia uses them almost at 100%.
• Paper and Spigot use only 1 core for the main tick. Folia distributes the load.

⚠️ What Should You Keep in Mind?

🔌 Plugin Compatibility

• Folia is not compatible with almost any plugin from Paper/Spigot.
• Only plugins specifically designed for its multithreaded model or that use only thread-safe.

🧪 Still in experimental phase

• Folia is in active development.
• It is stable for many uses, but not as tested as Paper.

🛠️ Ideal Use Cases

• Servers SMP with 100+ simultaneous players.
• Maps very large and spread out (several thousand blocks of exploration).
• Events with many separated players (for example, clan survival).

📈 Performance Improvement Example

In real tests with a 300-player SMP server on a 20k block radius map:

Server

CPU (Ryzen 9 5950X)

Average TPS

Paper

10 TPS

1 core at 100%

Folia

20 TPS

14 cores at 70%

🔚 Conclusion

Folia is the future of high performance in Minecraft. If you are managing an SMP server with a large world and many players, migrating to Folia can offer a drastic improvement in stability, player capacity and overall experience.

💡 Recommendation: Test Folia in a staging environment before migrating your main server, and make sure your plugins are compatible. We hope this guide has been helpful and remember🚀, feel free to ask on HolyHosting Discord or contact our support.

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