Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 engine that uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. It includes a package ecosystem called npm that is the largest open source library ecosystem. Node.js executes JavaScript using Google's V8 engine written in C++, which compiles JavaScript to machine code using two compilers. Node.js is commonly used for real-time applications due to its asynchronous nature and uses an event loop model.