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. 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.
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.
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, 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
See also
Computer network programming
Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP paradigm) Data Distribution Service Protected procedure call
References
Stevens, Richard. UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2, Second Edition: Interprocess Communications. Prentice Hall, 1999. 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 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
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