ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the interprocess communication primitives for the Linux operating system, for which the Application Programming Interface (API) has been standardized in POSIX. POSIX, which stands for "Portable Operating System Interface [for Unix]," is a family of standards specified by the IEEE to define common APIs along variants of the Unix operating system, including Linux. The chapter shows how semaphores, message queues, and other interprocess communication mechanisms are presented in Linux fewer than two different contexts: process and thread. It also describes what the differences are between the two configurations, as well as the pros and cons of each solution. It presents the interprocess mechanisms for Linux threads and processes. The chapter then introduces some Linux primitives for the management of clocks and timers, an important aspect when developing programs that interact with the outside world in embedded applications.
