Linux IPC selection?

Question

I have two processes A and B. A and B needs to communicate (Bi-directional) sometimes for passing signals, messages etc.
I have done some basic research about IPC's available in Linux like semaphore, message queues, dbus etc.
Now I am in confusion in deciding which one to use, Can anyone tell me which IPC is better to use for my application ?

Thanks in advance

Edited: Elaborating the Application. ( It is an Embedded Application )
Process A will be monitoring Temperature, speed calculation etc. Process B will be driving the motor, reading the sensor values (Numeric) etc. Sometimes I need to send the signal to process B telling Max temperature is reached, so stop driving motor. Sometimes needs to send the data read from sensor in Process A to Process B. Like this the Numeric data needs to be passed across process. And I am doing this in ARM Architecture.

Maybe you should elaborate on what type(s) of data your processors will be passing back and forth and possibly the type of processors you are using (ARM?, x86?, MIPS?). — Louis Ricci, Feb 20 '13 at 17:24
@n.m. and LastCoder I have edited the question and elaborated information of app is added. — duslabo, Feb 20 '13 at 17:46
you have choice between dbus and hand-made socket ipc. so the question is: why reinvent the wheel and not use dbus ? — pal, Feb 20 '13 at 19:11
I started with dbus but somewhat confused whether dbus is the right IPC for my application. — duslabo, Feb 21 '13 at 01:09

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Selection of IPC technique depends on application which you are trying to implement. Below is a good comparison base on performance:

IPC name      Latency     Throughput   Description
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Signal        Low          n/a         Can be used only for notification, traditionally-
                                       to push process to change its state

Socket        Moderate     Moderate    Only one mechanism which works for remote nodes,
                                       not very fast but universal

D-Bus         High         High        A high-level protocol that increases latency and
                                       reduces throughput compared to when using base
                                       sockets, gains in increased ease of use

Shared        n/a          High        Data saved in-between process runs(due to swapping
memory                                 access time) can have non-constant access latency

Mapped files  n/a          High        Data can be saved in-between device boots

Message      Low           Moderate    Data saved in-between process runs. The message
queue                                  size is limited but there is less overhead
                                       to handle messages

Here is one more nice comparison

Comparing Unix/Linux IPC

Thanks for nice comparison, planning to use D-Bus for my application, I am worrying because of it's high latency. Mine is realtime application. — duslabo, Feb 21 '13 at 01:17
the throughput section of D-bus says that "High", this should be low according to the description provided. — John, Jun 11 '19 at 09:31
This table does not make sense for D-Bus. It says "reduces throughput compared to when using base sockets". Sockets are listed as "Moderate" througput so D-Bus must be "Moderate" or less. According to the description it can not be "High". — JaM, Jul 01 '19 at 10:45

Linux IPC selection?

1 Answers1