research and submit your response describing how the various OSs—Linux, Windows

Question

research and submit your response describing how the various OSs—Linux, Windows Server, Solaris, or Mac OS X Server—manage inter-process communication.

In your response, also include answers to the following questions:

Which OS uses the best technique to manage IPC? Why?

Do all the OSs provide support for multiprocessing?

Which OS, in your opinion, manages multiprocessing in the most efficient manner?

What, according to you, is a better model for OSs—a process approach or a thread approach?

Do you think that distributed OSs use a process-communication technique different from that used by desktop OSs? Support your answer with examples.

What are the features and limitations of the CISC and RISC architectures?

Which architecture, do you think, is appropriate for a server that supports high volumes of transactions and concurrent connections? Support your answer with reasons.

Explanation / Answer

   inter-process communication (IPC) refers to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow processes it manages to share data.

Linux:

    1. Pipes - Unnamed pipes set up by the shell normally with the "|" character to route output from one program to the input of another.

          2. Message queues - Message queues are a mechanism set up to allow one or more processes to write messages that can be read by one or more other processes.

   3. Semaphores - Counters that are used to control access to shared resources. These counters are used as a locking mechanism to prevent more than one process from using the resource at a time.

   4. Shared memory - The mapping of a memory area to be shared by multiple processes.

           5. Signals - Sent by other processes or the kernel to a specific process to indicate various conditions.

         6. File: A record stored on disk, or a record synthesized on demand by a file server, which can be accessed by multiple processes

            7. FIFOS - Named pipes operating on the basis of first data in, first data out.

Windows:

Using the Clipboard for IPC

             The clipboard acts as a central depository for data sharing among applications. When a user performs a cut or copy operation in an application, the application puts the selected data on the clipboard in one or more standard or application-defined formats. Any other application can then retrieve the data from the clipboard, choosing from the available formats that it understands. The applications can reside on the same computer or on different computers on a network.

Using COM for IPC:

OLE provides services that make it easy for applications to call on other applications for data editing.The foundation of OLE is the Component Object Model (COM). A software component that uses COM can communicate with a wide variety of other components, even those that have not yet been written. The components interact as objects and clients.

Using Data Copy for IPC:

Data copy enables an application to send information to another application using the WM_COPYDATA message. This method requires cooperation between the sending application and the receiving application.

MAC os X:

       Apple Events : These are the only IPC mechanism which is universally supported by GUI applications on Mac OS X for remote control. Operation like opening a telling a application to open a file or to quit etc. can be done using these.

Distributed Notifications: A notification center manages the sending and receiving of notifications. It notifies all observers of notifications meeting specific criteria. The notification information is encapsulated in NSNotification objects.

Pasteboard: Every time a copy-paste happens between applications, that’s IPC happening using pasteboard. Inter-application drag and drop also uses the pasteboard. It is possible to create custom pasteboards

CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) Architecture:

       The CISC approach attempts to minimize the number of instructions per program, sacrificing the number of cycles per instruction. Computers based on the CISC architecture are designed to decrease the memory cost. Because, the large programs need more storage, thus increasing the memory cost.

Features of CISC Architecture:

RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) Architecture:

       RISC is used in portable devices due to its power efficiency.RISC is a type of microprocessor architecture that uses highly-optimized set of instructions.

Typical Features of RISC Architecture:

Drawbacks of RISC processor architecture:

Drawbacks of CISC:

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