computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

provides to allow the

processes A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

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 A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

. IPC is very important to the design process for

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

s 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 A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

modularity Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a s ...

, and system circumstances such as network bandwidth and latency.

Applications

Remote procedure call interfaces

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

's Remote Method Invocation (RMI) * ONC RPC *

XML-RPC XML-RPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.Simon St. Laurent, Joe Johnston, Edd Dumbill. (June 2001) ''Programming Web Services with XML-RPC.'' O'Reilly. First Editi ...

SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are used ...

* JSON-RPC * Message Bus (Mbus) (specified in RFC 3259) (not to be confused with M-Bus) *

.NET Remoting .NET Remoting is a Microsoft application programming interface (API) for interprocess communication released in 2002 with the 1.0 version of .NET Framework. It is one in a series of Microsoft technologies that began in 1990 with the first version ...

* 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 In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. A ...

use
ubus
micro bus architecture *

MCAPI The Multicore Communications API (MCAPI) is the first specification to be produced by the Multicore Association. MCAPI provides a standardized API for communication and synchronization between closely distributed (multiple cores on a chip and/or ch ...

Multicore Communications API * SIMPL The Synchronous Interprocess Messaging Project for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

(SIMPL) * 9P (Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol) * Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) *

Thrift Thrift may refer to: * Frugality * A savings and loan association in the United States * Apache Thrift, a remote procedure call (RPC) framework * Thrift (plant), a plant in the genus ''Armeria'' * Syd Thrift (1929–2006), American baseball exec ...

* ZeroC's

Internet Communications Engine The Internet Communications Engine, or Ice, is an open-source RPC framework developed by ZeroC. It provides SDKs for C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby and Swift, and can run on various operating systems, incl ...

(ICE) * ØMQ *

Enduro/X Enduro/X is an open-source middleware platform for distributed transaction processing. It is built on proven APIs such as X/Open group's XATMI and XA. The platform is designed for building real-time microservices based applications with a clu ...

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 Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

'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 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

, Component Object Model (COM), Microsoft Transaction Server (

COM+ Com or COM may refer to: Computing * COM (hardware interface), a serial port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers * COM file, or .com file, short for "command", a file extension for an executable file in MS-DOS * .com, an Internet top-level d ...

Distributed Component Object Model Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) is a proprietary Microsoft technology for communication between software components on networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the comm ...

(DCOM), Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), anonymous pipes, named pipes,

Local Procedure Call The Local Inter-Process Communication (LPC, often also referred to as Local Procedure Call or Lightweight Procedure Call) is an internal, undocumented inter-process communication facility provided by the Microsoft Windows NT kernel for lightweight ...

, MailSlots, Message loop, MSRPC,

, and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) *

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the l ...

's SPX *

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming inte ...

mmap,

message queue In computer science, message queues and mailboxes are software-engineering components typically used for inter-process communication (IPC), or for inter-thread communication within the same process. They use a queue for messaging – th ...

s, semaphores, and shared memory *

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archi ...

's messages * Solaris

Doors A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a ''doorway'' or ''portal''. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security b ...

* System V's message queues, semaphores, and shared memory * Linux Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC) *

OpenBinder OpenBinder is a system for inter-process communication. It was developed at Be Inc. and then Palm, Inc. and was the basis for the Binder framework now used in the Android operating system developed by Google. OpenBinder allows processes to p ...

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 libt2n is a free Inter-process communication (IPC) library which offers a simple way for C++ applications to communicate with one another. Introduction libt2n is an inter-process communication (IPC) system which is focused on ease of use and a ...

for C++ under Linux only, handles complex objects and exceptions *

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

's sessions * Distributed Ruby * Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) *

Electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...

's asynchronous IPC, shares

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...

objects between a main and a renderer process

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

by W. Richard Stevens
Interprocess Communication and Pipes in C

DIPC, Distributed System V IPC
{{Web syndication