CODEWITHSUNDEEP
socketsprocesspipeipcmessage
Kev1n91
Kev1n91

Reputation: 3673

Which kind of inter process communication (ipc) mechanism should I use at which moment?

I know that there are several methods of inter-process communication (ipc), like:

However I was unable to find a list or a paper comparing these mechanism to each other and pointing out the benefits of them in different environemnts.

E.g I know that if I use a file which gets written by process A and process B reads it out it will work on any OS and is pretty robust, on the other hand - why shouldn't I use TCP Socket ? Has anyone a kind of overview in which cases which methods are the most suitable ?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2256

Answers (1)

u354356007
u354356007

Reputation: 3215

Long story short:

  • Use lock files, mutexes, semaphores and barriers when processes compete for a scarce resource. They operate in a similar manner: several process try to acquire a synchronisation primitive, some of them acquire it, others are put in sleeping state until the primitive is available again. Use semaphores to limit the amount of processes working with a resource. Use a mutex to limit the amount to 1.

  • You can partially avoid using synchronisation primitives by using non-blocking thread-safe data structures.

  • Use signals, queues, pipes, events, messages, unix sockets when processes need to exchange data. Signals and events are usually used for notifying a process of something (for instance, ctrl+c in unix terminal sends a SIGINT signal to a process). Pipes, shared memory and unix sockets are for transmitting data.

  • Use sockets for networking (or, speaking formally, for exchanging data between processes located on different machines).

Long story long: take a look at Modern Operating Systems book by Tanenbaum & Bos, namely IPC chapter. The topic is vast and can't be completely covered within a list or a paper.

Upvotes: 2

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