Interprocess Communication

Processes may be independent or cooperating

Cooperating processes - are processes that can affect one another, i.e. sharing data

Independent processes - are processes that cannot affect or be affected by other processes

Reasons to cooperate:

• information sharing

• computation is sped up

• modularity

• convenience

To cooperate the processes need Interprocess Communication (IPC)

Two models IPC are:

• Shared memory

• Message passing

Producer and Consumer

There is always a Producer and Consumer, processes that send and receive data.

Unbounded-buffer - no limit on the size of the buffer (send as much data as it likes)

Bounded-buffer - there is a fixed buffer size