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We are still in the design-phase of our project but we are thinking of having three separate processes on an embedded Linux kernel. One of the processes with be a communications module which handles all communications to and from the device through various mediums.
The other two processes will need to be able to send/receive messages through the communication process. I am trying to evaluate the IPC techniques that Linux provides; the message the other processes will be sending will vary in size, from debug logs to streaming media at ~5 Mbit rate. Also, the media could be streaming in and out simultaneously.
Which IPC technique would you suggestion for this application? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication
Processor is running around 400-500 Mhz if that changes anything. Does not need to be cross-platform, Linux only is fine. Implementation in C or C++ is required.
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Of the available IPC mechanisms, the choice for performance often comes down to Unix domain sockets or named pipes (FIFOs). I read a paper on Performance Analysis of Various Mechanisms for Inter-process Communication that indicates Unix domain sockets for IPC may provide the best performance.
Shared memory is the fastest form of interprocess communication. The main advantage of shared memory is that the copying of message data is eliminated. The usual mechanism for synchronizing shared memory access is semaphores.
IPC is the way by which multiple processes or threads communicate among each other. IPC in OS obtains modularity, computational speedup and data sharing. Different ways of IPC are pipe, message passing, message queue, shared memory, direct communication, indirect communication and FIFO.
When selecting your IPC you should consider causes for performance differences including transfer buffer sizes, data transfer mechanisms, memory allocation schemes, locking mechanism implementations, and even code complexity.
Of the available IPC mechanisms, the choice for performance often comes down to Unix domain sockets or named pipes (FIFOs). I read a paper on Performance Analysis of Various Mechanisms for Inter-process Communication that indicates Unix domain sockets for IPC may provide the best performance. I have seen conflicting results elsewhere which indicate pipes may be better.
When sending small amounts of data, I prefer named pipes (FIFOs) for their simplicity. This requires a pair of named pipes for bi-directional communication. Unix domain sockets take a bit more overhead to setup (socket creation, initialization and connection), but are more flexible and may offer better performance (higher throughput).
You may need to run some benchmarks for your specific application/environment to determine what will work best for you. From the description provided, it sounds like Unix domain sockets may be the best fit.
Beej's Guide to Unix IPC is good for getting started with Linux/Unix IPC.
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I would go for Unix Domain Sockets: less overhead than IP sockets (i.e. no inter-machine comms) but same convenience otherwise.
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