Inter-process communication

A grid computing system that connects many personal computers over the Internet via inter-process network communication

In computer science, inter-process communication (IPC), also spelled interprocess communication, are the mechanisms provided by an operating system for processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categorized as clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests.^[1] Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing.

IPC is very important to the design process for microkernels and nanokernels, which reduce the number of functionalities provided by the kernel. Those functionalities are then obtained by communicating with servers via IPC, leading to a large increase in communication when compared to a regular monolithic kernel. IPC interfaces generally encompass variable analytic framework structures. These processes ensure compatibility between the multi-vector protocols upon which IPC models rely.^[2]

An IPC mechanism is either synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronization primitives may be used to have synchronous behavior with an asynchronous IPC mechanism.

Approaches

Different approaches to IPC have been tailored to different software requirements, such as performance, modularity, and system circumstances such as network bandwidth and latency.^[1]

Applications

Remote procedure call interfaces

Java's Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
ONC RPC
XML-RPC or SOAP
JSON-RPC
Message Bus (Mbus) (specified in RFC 3259) (not to be confused with M-Bus)
.NET Remoting
gRPC

Platform communication stack

The following are messaging, and information systems that utilize IPC mechanisms but don't implement IPC themselves:

KDE's Desktop Communications Protocol (DCOP) – deprecated by D-Bus
D-Bus
OpenWrt uses ubus micro bus architecture
MCAPI Multicore Communications API
SIMPL The Synchronous Interprocess Messaging Project for Linux (SIMPL)
9P (Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol)
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)
Thrift
ZeroC's Internet Communications Engine (ICE)
ØMQ
Enduro/X Middleware
YAMI4
Enlightenment_(software) E16 uses eesh as an IPC

Operating system communication stack

The following are platform or programming language-specific APIs:

Apple Computer's Apple events, previously known as Interapplication Communications (IAC)
ARexx ports
Enea's LINX for Linux (open source) and various DSP and general-purpose processors under OSE
The Mach kernel's Mach Ports
Microsoft's ActiveX, Component Object Model (COM), Microsoft Transaction Server (COM+), Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), anonymous pipes, named pipes, Local Procedure Call, MailSlots, Message loop, MSRPC, .NET Remoting, and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Novell's SPX
POSIX mmap, message queues, semaphores,^[4] and shared memory
RISC OS's messages
Solaris Doors
System V's message queues, semaphores, and shared memory
Linux Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC)
OpenBinder Open binder
QNX's PPS (Persistent Publish/Subscribe) service

Distributed object models

The following are platform or programming language specific-APIs that use IPC, but do not themselves implement it:

Libt2n for C++ under Linux only, handles complex objects and exceptions
PHP's sessions
Distributed Ruby
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
Electron's asynchronous IPC, shares JSON objects between a main and a renderer process^[5]

References

Stevens, Richard. UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2, Second Edition: Interprocess Communications. Prentice Hall, 1999. ISBN 0-13-081081-9
U. Ramachandran, M. Solomon, M. Vernon Hardware support for interprocess communication Proceedings of the 14th annual international symposium on Computer architecture. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Pages: 178 - 188. Year of Publication: 1987 ISBN 0-8186-0776-9
Crovella, M. Bianchini, R. LeBlanc, T. Markatos, E. Wisniewski, R. Using communication-to-computation ratio in parallel program designand performance prediction 1–4 December 1992. pp. 238–245 ISBN 0-8186-3200-3

^ a b "Interprocess Communications". Microsoft.
^ Camurati, P (1993). "Inter-process communications for system-level design". International Workshop on Hardware/Software Codesign.
^ "Windows/WSL Interop with AF_UNIX". Microsoft. 7 February 2018. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
^ "Concurrent programming - communication between processes"
^ "IpcMain | Electron".

External links

Linux ipc(5) man page describing System V IPC
Windows IPC
IPC available using Qt
Unix Network Programming (Vol 2: Interprocess Communications) by W. Richard Stevens
Interprocess Communication and Pipes in C
DIPC, Distributed System V IPC