Inter Process Communication (IPC) - Free MCQ Practice Test with solutions,

Interprocess Communication allows processes to communicate and synchronize their actions. Interprocess Communication (IPC) mechanism is used by cooperating processes to exchange data and information.
There are two models of IPC:
→ Shared Memory
→ Message Passing

Two operations provided by the IPC facility are receive and send messages. Exchange of data takes place in cooperating processes.

The link between two processes P and Q to send and receive messages is called communication link. Two processes P and Q want to communicate with each other; there should be a communication link that must exist between these two processes so that both processes can able to send and receive messages using that link.

In indirect communication between processes P and Q there is a mailbox to help communication between P and Q. A mailbox can be viewed abstractly as an object into which messages can be placed by processes and from which messages can be removed.

In the Zero capacity queue the sender blocks until the receiver receives the message. Zero capacity queue has maximum capacity of Zero; thus message queue does not have any waiting message in it.

Message Passing system allows processes to communicate with each other without sharing the same address space.

Messages sent by a process can be fixed or variable size. If the message size of the process is fixed then system level implementation is straightforward but it makes the task of programming more difficult. If the message size of the process is variable then system level implementation is more complex but it makes the task of programming simpler.

Bounded capacity and Unbounded capacity queues are referred to as Automatic buffering. Buffer capacity of the Bounded capacity queue is finite length and buffer capacity of the Unbounded queue is infinite.

For direct communication, a communication link is associated with exactly two processes. One communication link must exist between a pair of processes.

In the non blocking send, the sending process sends the message and resumes operation. Sending process doesn’t care about reception. It is also known as asynchronous send.