Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

13.5. Systems where shared-memory communication is not appropriate

Some areas where the programmer may find shared memory undesirable or impossible to use are as follows:

• In protected systems, such as multi-user systems, where processes run in separate address spaces. This includes client–server communication above a microkernel.

• Between processes on different computers, such as within certain process control systems or general-purpose network-based systems.

• In systems where it is desirable to retain flexibility over where processes are loaded. Here, it is assumed that we want to defer the decision of which processes to load into which computers until system configuration time. Processes which use shared-memory IPC are constrained to be loaded ...