Benefits of Using IPC

The IPC subsystem provides location-transparent, message-based communication services between applications. Two communication models are provided:

• The RPC model (see the ipcCall(2K) ipcReceive(2K) and ipcReply(2K) man pages).

• Asynchronous communication (see the ipcSend(2K) and ipcReceive(2K) man pages).

Although the IPC service implements fine-grained locking policies (which makes its services highly preemptable) it cannot enforce real-time constraints. IPC services are therefore intended specifically for distributed applications.