Signals are notifications delivered asynchronously to a process by the kernel. Signals are grouped in two categories. First, there are standard signals, which have been there since the early days of Unix. Second, there are POSIX real-time signals which are specified in POSIX.1b, or, IEEE Std 1003.1b-1993, for Real-time Extensions for POSIX compliant Operating Systems.… Read more
Shared memory is the fastest method of interprocess communication (IPC) under Linux and other Unix-like systems. The system provides a shared memory segment which the calling process can map to its address space. After that, it behaves just like any other part of the process's address space.… Read more
POSIX Threads provide multiple flows of execution within a process. The threads have their own stacks but share the global data and the heap. So the global variables are visible to multiple threads. Also, the threads need to synchronize their actions so that they jointly realize the overall objectives of the process they belong to.… Read more
A process is an execution environment in an operating system. A process has code and data segments which are initialized from a program during an exec system call. A process has a thread of execution, wherein instructions are executed as per the value of the program counter register.… Read more
Semaphores are used for process and thread synchronization. Semaphores are clubbed with message queues and shared memory under the Interprocess Communication (IPC) facilities in Unix-like systems such as Linux. There are two varieties of semaphores, the traditional System V semaphores and the newer POSIX semaphores.… Read more
POSIX interprocess comunication (IPC) was introduced in the POSIX.1b standard (IEEE Std 1003.1b-1993) for real time extensions. POSIX message queues have been made available in Linux since the version 2.6.6 (May 2004). POSIX IPC calls are as per the standard but may not be available on older Unix-like systems.… Read more