Cooperating Processes!

■ Independent process cannot affect or be affected

by the execution of another process"
■ Cooperating process can affect or be affected by
the execution of another process"
■ Advantages of process cooperation"
● Information sharing "
● Computation speed-up"
● Modularity"
● Convenience"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 1!
 Communications Models!

"a. Message Passing " "b. Shared Memory"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 2!
 Producer-Consumer Problem!

■ Paradigm for cooperating processes,

producer process produces information that is
consumed by a consumer process"
● unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the
size of the buffer"
● bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed
buffer size"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 3!
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution!

■ Shared data"
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10"
typedef struct {"
". . ."
} item;"
"
item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];"
int in = 0;"
int out = 0;"
■ Solution is correct, but can only use
BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements"
!

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 4!
 Bounded-Buffer – Producer Process!

while (true) {
/* Produce an item */
while (((in + 1) %
BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing -- no
free buffers */
buffer[in] = item;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
{
"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 5!
 Bounded Buffer – Consumer Process!

while (true) {
while (in == out)
; // do nothing --
nothing to consume
// remove an item from the
buffer
item = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) %
BUFFER_SIZE;
}

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 6!
 Message Passing System!
■ Mechanism for processes to communicate and to
synchronize their actions"
■ Message system – processes communicate with
each other without resorting to shared variables"
■ IPC facility provides two operations:"
send(message) –message size fixed/variable "
●
● receive(message)"
■ If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:"
● establish a communication link between them"
● exchange messages via send/receive"
■ Implementation of communication link"
● physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)"
● logical (e.g., logical properties)"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 7!
 Direct Communication!
■ Processes must name each other explicitly:"
● send (P, message) – send a message to
process P"
● receive(Q, message) – receive a message
from process Q"
■ Properties of communication link"
● Links are established automatically"
● A link is associated with exactly one pair of
communicating processes"
● Between each pair there exists exactly one link"
● The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-
directional"
Chapter 3 – Part II ! 8!
 Indirect Communication!
■ Messages are directed and received from mailboxes
(also referred to as ports)"
● Each mailbox has a unique id"
● Processes can communicate only if they share a
mailbox"
■ Properties of communication link"
● Link established only if processes share a
common mailbox"
● A link may be associated with many processes"
● Each pair of processes may share several
communication links"
● Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional"
Chapter 3 – Part II ! 9!
 Synchronization!
■ Message passing may be either blocking or non-
blocking"
■ Blocking is considered synchronous!
● Blocking send has the sender block until the
message is received"
● Blocking receive has the receiver block until a
message is available"
■ Non-blocking is considered asynchronous!
● Non-blocking send has the sender send the
message and continue"
● Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive a
valid message or null"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 10!

 Client-Server Communication!

■ Sockets"
■ Remote Procedure Calls"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 11!

 Sockets!

■ A socket is defined as an endpoint for

communication"
■ Concatenation of IP address and port"
■ The socket 161.25.19.8:1625 refers to port
1625 on host 161.25.19.8!
■ Communication consists between a pair of
sockets"

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 12!

 Socket Communication!

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 13!

 Remote Procedure Calls!

■ Remote procedure call (RPC) abstracts procedure

calls between processes on networked systems."
■ Stubs – client-side proxy for the actual procedure
on the server."
■ The client-side stub locates the server and
marshalls the parameters."
■ The server-side stub receives this message,
unpacks the marshalled parameters, and performs
the procedure on the server."

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 14!

 Execution of RPC!

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 15!

 Marshalling Parameters!

Chapter 3 – Part II ! 16!