yes, all of node.js is built on such operations. what do you think is happening when you `await fs.promises.readFile(name, 'utf8')`? it dispatches a libuv thread to read the file you want, and resolve the promise when the background thread has completed the operation.
That really varies significantly depending on the underlying OS. On Windows, you can do threaded (IE, your thread blocks) or async (you have a callback) IO. There isn't a requirement to spin up a background thread to perform non-blocking IO.
Except there is often no background thread but async IO.