Interprocess Communication


  • Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
  • Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes, including sharing data
  • Reasons for cooperating processes:
    • Information sharing
    • Computation speedup
    • Modularity
    • Convenience
  • Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
  • Two models of IPC
    • Shared memory
    • Message passing


  • Communications Models




    Cooperating Processes


  • Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution of another process
  • Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of another process
  • Advantages of process cooperation
    • Information sharing
    • Computation speed-up
    • Modularity
    • Convenience


  • Producer-Consumer Problem


  • Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer process produces information that is consumed by a consumer process
    • unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size of the buffer
    • bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer size


  • Bounded-Buffer–Shared-Memory Solution


  • Shared data
  • #define BUFFER_SIZE 10
    typedef struct {
     . . .
    } item;
    item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
    int in = 0;
    int out = 0; 
    
    Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements

    Bounded-Buffer – Producer

       while (true) { /* Produce an item */
       while (((in = (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE count) == out)
       ; /* do nothing -- no free buffers */
       buffer[in] = item;
       in = (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
       }
       

    Bounded Buffer – Consumer

       while (true) {
    while (in == out)
    ; // do nothing -- nothing to consume
    // remove an item from the buffer
    item = buffer[out];
    out = (out + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
    return item;
    }
    


    Interprocess Communication – Message Passing


  • Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize their actions
  • Message system – processes communicate with each other without resorting to shared variables
  • IPC facility provides two operations:
    • send(message) – message size fixed or variable
    • receive(message)
  • If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
    • establish a communication link between them
    • exchange messages via send/receive
  • Implementation of communication link
    • physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
    • logical (e.g., logical properties)


  • Implementation Questions

  • How are links established?
  • Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
  • How many links can there be between every pair of communicating processes?
  • What is the capacity of a link?
  • Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or variable?
  • Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?


  • Direct Communication


  • rocesses must name each other explicitly:
    • send (P, message) – send a message to process P
    • receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q
  • Properties of communication link
    • Links are established automatically
    • A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating processes
    • Between each pair there exists exactly one link
    • The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional


  • Indirect Communication


  • Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred to as ports)
    • Each mailbox has a unique id
    • Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
  • Properties of communication link
    • Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
    • A link may be associated with many processes
    • Each pair of processes may share several communication links


    • Indirect Communication


    • Operations
      • create a new mailbox
      • send and receive messages through mailbox
      • destroy a mailbox
    • Primitives are defined as:
    • send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
    • receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A


    • Indirect Communication


    • Mailbox sharing
      • P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
      • P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
      • Who gets the message?
    • Solutions
      • Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
      • Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive operation
      • Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver. Sender is notified who the receiver was.


    • Synchronization


    • Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
    • Blocking is considered synchronous
      • Blocking send has the sender block until the message is received
      • Blocking receive has the receiver block until a message is available
    • Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
      • Non-blocking send has the sender send the message and continue
      • Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive a valid message or null