Shared Memory

Shared Memory

The fastest IPC mechanism, mapping common memory into multiple processes, at the cost of requiring explicit synchronization.

What is Inter-Process Communication (IPC)?

Inter-process communication (IPC) is the set of mechanisms an operating system provides for separate processes — each with its own isolated address space — to…

What are Memory-Mapped Files?

A memory-mapped file is a file whose contents are mapped directly into a process’s virtual address space via the page cache, so the program reads and writes th…

Peterson’s Solution for Mutual Exclusion

Peterson’s solution is a software-only algorithm for two processes that guarantees mutual exclusion, progress, and bounded waiting using only two shared variab…

What is Shared Memory IPC?

Shared memory IPC is a technique where the OS maps the same physical memory frames into the address spaces of two or more processes, letting them read and writ…

Compare Different IPC Mechanisms (Pipes, Shared Memory, Message Queues)

Pipes offer simple, ordered byte-stream communication between related processes with kernel-managed buffering, shared memory offers the fastest raw throughput…

What is Cache Coherence in Multiprocessor Systems?

Cache coherence is the guarantee that all CPU cores in a multiprocessor system see a single, consistent view of a shared memory location, even though each core…

How Do Threads and Processes Differ in Memory Sharing?

Threads within the same process share the same address space — code, heap, and global data — and each only gets its own private stack and register set, whereas…