Interprocess communication - wikipedia Interprocess communication For other uses, see IPC. This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. ( August 2015 ) An example showing a grid computing system connecting many personal computers over the Internet using inter-process network communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication ( IPC ) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the 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. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing. Methods for doing IPC are divided into categories which vary based on software requirements, such as performance and modularity requirements, and system circumstances, such as network bandwidth and latency. IPC is very important to the design process for microkernels and nanokernels. Microkernels reduce the number of functionalities provided by the kernel. Those functionalities are then obtained by communicating with servers via IPC, increasing drastically the number of IPC compared to a regular monolithic kernel. Contents 1 Approaches 2 Synchronization 3 Applications 3.1 Remote procedure call interfaces 3.2 Platform communication stack 3.3 Operating system communication stack 3.4 Distributed object models 4 See also 5 References 6 External links Approaches Method Short Description Provided by ( operating systems or other environments ) File A record stored on disk, or a record synthesized on demand by a file server, which can be accessed by multiple processes. Most operating systems Signal ; also Asynchronous System Trap A system message sent from one process to another, not usually used to transfer data but instead used to remotely command the partnered process. Most operating systems Socket Data sent over a network interface, either to a different process on the same computer or to another computer on the network. Stream - oriented ( TCP ; data written through a socket requires formatting to preserve message boundaries ) or more rarely message - oriented ( UDP, SCTP ). Most operating systems Unix domain socket Similar to an internet socket but all communication occurs within the kernel. Domain sockets use the file system as their address space. Processes reference a domain socket as an inode, and multiple processes can communicate with one socket All POSIX operating systems and Windows 10 Message queue A data stream similar to a socket, but which usually preserves message boundaries. Typically implemented by the operating system, they allow multiple processes to read and write to the message queue without being directly connected to each other. Most operating systems Pipe A unidirectional data channel. Data written to the write end of the pipe is buffered by the operating system until it is read from the read end of the pipe. Two - way data streams between processes can be achieved by creating two pipes utilizing standard input and output. All POSIX systems, Windows Named pipe A pipe implemented through a file on the file system instead of standard input and output. Multiple processes can read and write to the file as a buffer for IPC data. All POSIX systems, Windows, AmigaOS 2.0 + Shared memory Multiple processes are given access to the same block of memory which creates a shared buffer for the processes to communicate with each other. All POSIX systems, Windows Message passing Allows multiple programs to communicate using message queues and / or non-OS managed channels, commonly used in concurrency models. Used in RPC, RMI, and MPI paradigms, Java RMI, CORBA, DDS, MSMQ, MailSlots, QNX, others Memory - mapped file A file mapped to RAM and can be modified by changing memory addresses directly instead of outputting to a stream. This shares the same benefits as a standard file. All POSIX systems, Windows Synchronization Main article : Synchronization ( computer science ) Depending on the solution, an IPC mechanism may provide synchronization or leave it up to processes and threads to communicate amongst themselves ( e.g. via shared memory ). While synchronization will include some information ( e.g. whether or not the lock is enabled, a count of processes waiting, etc. ) it is not primarily an information - passing communication mechanism per se. Examples of synchronization primitives are : Semaphore Spinlock Barrier Mutual exclusion Applications This article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this article to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. ( November 2016 ) Remote procedure call interfaces Main article : remote procedure call Java 's Remote Method Invocation ( RMI ) ONC RPC XML - RPC or SOAP JSON - RPC Message Bus ( Mbus ) ( specified in RFC 3259 ). NET Remoting Platform communication stack The following are messaging and information systems that utilize IPC mechanisms, but do n't implement IPC themselves : KDE 's Desktop Communications Protocol ( DCOP ) -- deprecated by D - Bus D - Bus MCAPI Multicore Communications API SIMPL The Synchronous Interprocess Messaging Project for Linux ( SIMPL ) 9P ( Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol ) Distributed Computing Environment ( DCE ) Thrift TIPC ZeroC 's Internet Communications Engine ( ICE ) ØMQ Enduro / X Middleware YAMI4 Operating system communication stack This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( May 2013 ) The following are platform or programming language - specific APIs : Apple Computer 's Apple events ( previously known as Interapplication Communications ( IAC ) ). 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, and shared memory RISC OS 's messages Solaris Doors System V 's message queues, semaphores, and shared memory 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 ) See also Computer programming portal Information technology portal Computer network programming Communicating Sequential Processes ( CSP paradigm ) Data Distribution Service Protected procedure call References ^ Jump up to : `` Interprocess Communications ''. Microsoft. Jump up ^ `` Windows / WSL Interop with AF_UNIX ''. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 25 May 2018. Jump up ^ Concurrent programming - communication between processes http://www.tldp.org/pub/Linux/docs/ldp-archived/linuxfocus/English/Archives/lf-2003_01-0281.pdf 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 External links Linux ipc ( 5 ) man page describing System V IPC Windows IPC Windows Support Chat Unix Network Programming ( Vol 2 : Interprocess Communications ) by W. Richard Stevens Interprocess Communication and Pipes in C DIPC, Distributed System V IPC hide Inter-process communication Data exchange among threads in computer programs Methods File Memory - mapped file Message passing Message queue and mailbox Named pipe Anonymous pipe Pipe Semaphore Shared memory Signal Sockets Internet Unix Protocols and standards Apple events COM+ CORBA D - Bus DDS DCE ICE OpenBinder ONC RPC POSIX ( various methods ) SOAP REST Thrift TIPC XML - RPC Software libraries and frameworks D - Bus libevent SIMPL LINX Web syndication History Blogging Podcasting Video blogging Web syndication technology Types Art Bloggernacle Classical music Corporate Dream diary Edublog Electronic journal Fake Family Fashion Food Health Law Lifelog Litblog MP3 News Photoblog Police Political Prayer Project Reverse Travel Warblog Technology General BitTorrent Feed URI scheme Features Linkback Permalink Ping Pingback Reblogging Refback Rollback Trackback Mechanism Conversation threading Geotagging RSS enclosure Synchronization Memetics Atom feed Data feed Photofeed Product feed RDF feed Web feed RSS GeoRSS MRSS RSS TV Social Livemark Mashup pooling Referencing RSS editor RSS tracking Streaming media Standard OML OPML RSS Advisory Board -- Usenet :. net World Wide Web + ( - let ) XBEL XOXO Form Audio podcast Enhanced podcast Mobilecast Narrowcasting Peercasting Screencast Slidecasting Videocast Webcomic Webtoon Web series Anonymous blogging Collaborative blog Columnist Instant messaging Liveblogging Microblog Mobile blogging Roblog Spam blog Video blogging Motovlogging Media Alternative media Carnivals Fiction Journalism Citizen Database Online diary Search engines Sideblog Software Web directory Micromedia Aggregation News Poll Review Search Video Atom AtomPub Broadcatching Hashtag NewsML G2 Social communication Social software Web Slice Related Blogosphere Escribitionist Glossary of blogging Pay per click Posting style Slashdot effect Spam in blogs Uses of podcasting Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inter-process_communication&oldid=845687766 '' Categories : Inter-process communication Hidden categories : Articles lacking in - text citations from August 2015 All articles lacking in - text citations Articles needing cleanup from November 2016 All pages needing cleanup Articles with sections that need to be turned into prose from November 2016 Articles needing additional references from May 2013 All articles needing additional references Pages using RFC magic links Talk Search Contents About Wikipedia Azərbaycanca Català Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά Español فارسی Français 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Русский Slovenčina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe Українська 中文 18 more Edit links This page was last edited on 13 June 2018, at 13 : 24. 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Question: a means for two processes to exchange information is with the use of
Answer: inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC)