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Interprocess Communication Mechanism

Exchange of data between two or more separate, independent
processes/threads is possible using IPC. Operating systems provide
facilities/resources for Inter-Process Communications (IPC), such as message
queues, semaphores and shared memory.
A complex programming environment often uses multiple cooperating
processes to perform related operations. These processes must communicate with
each other and share resources and information. The Kernel must provide
mechanisms that make this possible. These mechanisms are collectively referred
to as interprocess communication.
Distributed computing systems make use of these facilities/resources to
provide Application Programming Interface (API) which allows IPC to be
programmed at a higher level of abstraction, (e.g., send and receive).
Five types of inter-process communication are as follows :
1. Shared memory permits processes to communicate by simply reading and
writing to a specified memory location.
2. Mapped memory is similar to shared memory, except that it is associated
with a file in the file system.
3. Pipes permit sequential communication from one process to a related
process.
4. FIFOs are similar to pipes, except that unrelated processes can
communicate because the pipe is given a name in the file system.
5. Sockets support communication between unrelated processes even on
different computers.

Name Description Scope Use

Data is written to and read from a
typical UNIX file.
File Local Sharing large data sets.
Any number of processes can
interoperate.

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Data is transferred between two

processes using dedicated file Simple data sharing,
Pipe descriptors. Local such as producer and
Communication occurs only between a consumer.
parent and child process.
Data is exchanged between processes Producer and consumer
via dedicated file descriptors. or command-and-contro
Named 1, as demonstrated with
Communication can occur between Local
pipe MySQL server and its
any two peer processes on the same command-line query
host. utility.
Cannot transfer data in a
An interrupt alerts the application to a signal, so mostly useful
Signal Local for process
specific condition.
management.
Information is shared by reading and Cooperative work of any
Shared
writing from a common segment of Local kind, especially if
memory security is required.
memory.
After special setup, data is transferred Local Network services such
Socket using common input/output or as FTP, ssh, and the
operations. remote Apache Web Server.
Purposes of IPC
Data transfer : One process may wish to send data to another process.
Sharing data : Multiple processes may wish to operate on shared data, such that
if a process modifies the data, that change will be immediately visible to other
processes sharing it
Event modification : A process may wish to notify another process or set of
processes that some event has occurred.
Resource sharing : The Kernel provides default semantics for resource
allocation; they are not suitable for all application.
Process control : A process such as a debugger may wish to assume complete
control over the execution of another process.
IPC has two forms : IPC on same host and IPC on different hosts.

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IPC is used for 2 functions :

1. Synchronization : Used to coordinate access to resources among
processes and also to coordinate the execution of these processes. They are
record locking, Semaphores, mutexes and condition variables.
2. Message passing : Used when processes wish to exchange information.
Message passing takes several forms such as : Pipes, FIFOs, Message
queues and Shared memory.
Features of Message Passing
1. Simplicity : Message passing system should be simple and easy to use. It
should be possible to communicate with old and new applications.
2. Uniform semantics : Message passing is used for two types of IPC.
1. Local communication : Communicating processes are on the same
node.
2. Remote communication : Communicating processes are on the
different nodes.

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3. Efficiency : IPC become so expansive if message passing system is not

effective. Users try avoiding to IPC for their applications. Message passing
system will become more efficient if we try to avoid more message
exchanges during communication process. For examples :
a. Avoiding the costs of establishing and terminating connection.
b. Minimizing the costs of maintaining the connections.
c. Piggybacking of acknowledgement.
4. Reliability : Distributed systems are prone to different catastrophic events
such as node crashes or physical link failures. Loss of message because of
communication link fails. To handle the loss messages, we required
acknowledgement and retransmission policy. Duplicate message is one of
the major problems. This happens because of timeouts or events of failures.
5. Correctness : Correctness is a feature related to IPC protocols for group
communication. Issues related to correctness are as follows :
1. Atomicity : Every message sent to a group of receivers will be delivered
to either all of them or none of them.
2. Ordered delivery : Messages arrive to all receivers in an order acceptable
to the application.
3. Survivability : Messages will be correctly delivered despite partial failures
of processes, machine, or communication links.
6. Security : Message passing system must provide a secure end to end
communication.
7. Portability : Message passing system should itself be portable.
IPC Message Format
Message passing system requires the synchronization and communication
between the two processes. Message passing used as a method of communication
in microkernels. Message passing systems come in many forms. Messages sent
by a process can be either fixed or variable size. The actual function of message
passing is normally provided in the form of a pair of primitives.

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a) Send (destination_name, message)

b) Receive (source_name, message)
Send primitive is used for sending a message to destination. Process sends
information in the form of a message to another process designated by a
destination. A process receives information by executing the receive primitive,
which indicates the source of the sending process and the message.
Design characteristics of message system for IPC.
1. Synchronization between the process
2. Addressing
3. Format of the message
4. Queueing discipline
Issues in IPC by Message Passing
Message is a block of information.
A message is a meaningful formatted block of information sent by the
sender process to the receiver process.
The message block consists of a fixed length header followed by a variable
size collection of typed data objects.
The header block of a message may have the following elements :
1. Address : A set of characters that uniquely identify both the sender and
receiver.
2. Sequence number : It is the message identifier to identify duplicate and
lost messages in case of system failures.
3. Structural information : It has two parts. The type part that specifies
whether the data to be sent to the receiver is included within the message
or the message only contains a pointer to the data. The second part specifies
length of the variable-size message.

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Some important issues to be considered for the design of an IPC protocol

based message passing system :
I. The sender's identity
II. The receiver's identity
III. Number of receivers
IV. Guaranteed acceptance of sent messages by the receiver
V. Acknowledgement by the sender
VI. Handling system crashes or link failures
VII. Handling of buffers
VIII. Order of delivery of messages
IPC Synchronization
Send operation can be synchronous or asynchronous. Receive operation
can be blocking or nonblocking.
Sender and receiver process can be blocking mode or nonblocking mode.
Different possibility of sender and receivers are as follows :
1. Blocking send, blocking receive
2. Nonblocking send, block receive
3. Nonblocking send, Nonblocking receive
Blocking send, blocking receive
Blocking send must wait for the receiver to receive the message,
synchronous communication is an example of blocking send. Both processes
(sender and receiver) are blocked untill the message is delivered.

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Rendezvous : Sending a message to another process leaving the sender process

suspended until the message is received and processed.
Nonblocking send, blocking receive
Sender is free to send the messages but receiver is blocked until the
requested message arrives.
Asynchronous communication is an example of nonblocking send.
Asynchronous communication with nonblocking sends increases throughput by
reducing the time that processes spend waiting.
Natural concurrent programming task uses the nonblocking send.
Nonblocking send is the overhead on the programmer for determine that a
message has been received or not.
Shared Memory
A region of memory that is shared by co-operating processes is established.
Processes can then exchange information by reading and writing data to the
shared region.
Shared memory allows maximum speed and convenience of
communication, as it can be done at memory speeds when within a computer.
Shared memory is faster than message passing, as message-passing systems are
typically implemented using system calls and thus require the more time-
consuming task of Kernel intervention.
In contrast, in shared-memory systems, system calls are required only to
establish shared-memory regions.

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Advantages
1. Good for sharing large amount of data. 2. Very fast.
Limitations
1. No synchronization provided - applications must create their own.
2. Alternative to shared memory is mmap system call, which maps file into
the address space of the caller.

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