Inter Process Communication in Operating System (OS)

April 30, 2021

Inter Process Communication in OS

There are 2 types of process –

    • Independent Processes – Processes that do not share data with other processes.
    • Cooperating Processes – Processes that shares data with other processes.

The cooperating process requires Interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism.

Inter-Process Communication is the mechanism by which cooperating process share data and information.

The mechanism that will allow them to exchange data and information are the following:–

    • Shared memory    
    • Message Passing
Inter-Process Communication Types in OS Operating System

Types

Let’s look at few of the important points of each .

Shared Memory

  1. A particular region of memory is shared between cooperating process.
  2. Cooperating process can exchange information by reading and writing data to this shared region.
  3. It’s faster than Memory Parsing, as Kernel is required only once, that is, setting up a shared memory . After That, kernel assistance is not required.

Message Parsing

  1. Communication takes place by     exchanging messages directly between cooperating process.
  2. Easy to implement   
  3. Useful for small amount of data.
  4. Implemented using System     Calls, so takes more time than Shared Memory.
Shared Memory in OS Operating System
Message Passing in OS Operating System

Note – There is too much and extra information given on various websites, that is not necessary. What we have given is more than necessary for Inter Process Communication.

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    2. Critical Section
    3. Inter-Process Communication
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    7. Mutex vs. Semaphore
    8. Atomic Operations in OS
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    10. Peterson’s Algorithm for Critical Section Problem (Only important for Cisco and Arista Networs)
    11. Readers-Writers Problem
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