Short Notes: Inter-Process Communication

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• Processes executing concurrently in the operating system may be either 
independent or cooperating processes.
• A process is independent if it can't affect or be affected by the other 
processes executing in the system.
• Any process that shares data with other processes is a cooperating process.
• Advantages of process cooperation are information sharing, computation 
speed up, modularity and convenience to work on many tasks at the same 
time.
• Cooperating processes require an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) 
mechanism that will allow them to exchange data and information.
• There are two fundamental models of IPC:
° Shared memory: In the shared memory model, a region of memory that 
is shared by a cooperating process is established. Process can then 
exchange information by reading and writing data to the shared region, 
o Message passing: In the message passing model, communication takes 
place by means of messages exchanged between the cooperating 
processes.