Producer-Consumer Pipelines

A data loader, a log shipper, a batch inference job and a checkpoint writer are the same program: stages connected by bounded buffers, each running at its own pace, the slowest setting the throughput and the buffers absorbing the jitter between them. The coding screen asks you to build one (read, decode, batch, feed a consumer) and then pushes on the production questions: buffer sizes, clean stops, failure propagation, and why it runs at a third of the expected speed. This page derives throughput from stage times, implements the pipeline in threads and asyncio, and works the stop and failure semantics.