Who runs the callback when using apply_async method of a multiprocessing pool?

There is indeed a hint in the docs:

callback should complete immediately since otherwise the thread which
handles the results will get blocked.

The callbacks are handled in the main process, but they’re run in their own separate thread. When you create a Pool it actually creates a few Thread objects internally:

class Pool(object):
    Process = Process

    def __init__(self, processes=None, initializer=None, initargs=(),
                 maxtasksperchild=None):
        self._setup_queues()
        self._taskqueue = Queue.Queue()
        self._cache = {}
        ... # stuff we don't care about
        self._worker_handler = threading.Thread(
            target=Pool._handle_workers,
            args=(self, )
            )
        self._worker_handler.daemon = True
        self._worker_handler._state = RUN 
        self._worker_handler.start()

        self._task_handler = threading.Thread(
            target=Pool._handle_tasks,
            args=(self._taskqueue, self._quick_put, self._outqueue,
                  self._pool, self._cache)
            )
        self._task_handler.daemon = True
        self._task_handler._state = RUN 
        self._task_handler.start()

        self._result_handler = threading.Thread(
            target=Pool._handle_results,
            args=(self._outqueue, self._quick_get, self._cache)
            )
        self._result_handler.daemon = True
        self._result_handler._state = RUN
        self._result_handler.start()

The interesting thread for us is _result_handler; we’ll get to why shortly.

Switching gears for a second, when you run apply_async, it creates an ApplyResult object internally to manage getting the result from the child:

def apply_async(self, func, args=(), kwds={}, callback=None):
    assert self._state == RUN
    result = ApplyResult(self._cache, callback)
    self._taskqueue.put(([(result._job, None, func, args, kwds)], None))
    return result

class ApplyResult(object):

    def __init__(self, cache, callback):
        self._cond = threading.Condition(threading.Lock())
        self._job = job_counter.next()
        self._cache = cache
        self._ready = False
        self._callback = callback
        cache[self._job] = self


    def _set(self, i, obj):
        self._success, self._value = obj
        if self._callback and self._success:
            self._callback(self._value)
        self._cond.acquire()
        try:
            self._ready = True
            self._cond.notify()
        finally:
            self._cond.release()
        del self._cache[self._job]

As you can see, the _set method is the one that ends up actually executing the callback passed in, assuming the task was successful. Also notice that it adds itself to a global cache dict at the end of __init__.

Now, back to the _result_handler thread object. That object calls the _handle_results function, which looks like this:

    while 1:
        try:
            task = get()
        except (IOError, EOFError):
            debug('result handler got EOFError/IOError -- exiting')
            return

        if thread._state:
            assert thread._state == TERMINATE
            debug('result handler found thread._state=TERMINATE')
            break

        if task is None:
            debug('result handler got sentinel')
            break

        job, i, obj = task
        try:
            cache[job]._set(i, obj)  # Here is _set (and therefore our callback) being called!
        except KeyError:
            pass

        # More stuff

It’s a loop that just pulls results from children out of queue, finds the entry for it in cache, and calls _set, which executes our callback. It’s able to run even though you’re in a loop because it isn’t running in the main thread.