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In operating system what is the difference between message queues and mailboxes.
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In computer science, message queues and mailboxes are software-engineering components typically used for inter-process communication (IPC), or for inter-thread communication within the same process. They use a queue for messaging – the passing of control or of content.
Message queue has inherent synchronization overhead, guarantee of safety at cost of performance. Shared memory has no safeguards - if two threads access it simultaneously, they will possibly conflict (write inconsistent data) unless you assure thread safety yourself.
The pipe is the Unix IPC form to provide a flow of information in one direction. Message Queue is a System VIPC form to store a list of messages. A pipe can be created using pipe() function which returns two file descriptors, one is for reading and another is for writing.
A Message Queue is a mechanism for sharing information, between processes, threads, systems. An AppEngine task Queue is a way for an AppEngine application to say to itself, I need to do this, but I am going to do it later, outside of the context of a client request.
I suspect there is no universally accepted definition for what makes a message queue versus a mailbox. Each RTOS may use different terminology and implementation details so you'd have to look at each RTOS individually.
Generally speaking some of the common differences include:
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