Inter-Process Communication

When there are situations when different processes running on a system wants to communicate with each other in order to pass some data or for other means then there needs to be some kind of mechanism which can help the processes in achieving that, and that mechanism is termed as Inter-Process Communication.

Before going to “Process to Process communication” we must know the difference between Inter-Process Communication in “Computer networks” and “Operating systems”

IPC in Computer Networks

When there are different hosts which may exist on the same network or on different networks wants to communicate with each other in order to share information then that is known as IPC in Computer Networks.

The whole process of handling the content between different hosts are handled by TCP/IP or ISO-OSI.

Now that we know what IPC in computer networks is, Let us understand IPC in Operating Systems.

IPC in Operating Systems

Generally, IPC refers to, two processes communicating with each other in order to perform a task and share information.

Note: Whenever they (processes) wants to “Cooperate” or “Compete” they need to communicate and whenever they are going to communicate, they are going to do it with the help of “Shared Memory“.