Concurrency

Thread vs Process: What’s the Difference? When you write software, you often want it to do multiple things at once. This is where processes and threads come in — both allow concurrency, but in different ways. What is a Process? A process is an independent program running on your system. Each process has: Its own memory space. Own resources (file descriptors, sockets). At least one thread (the main thread). Example: If you open Chrome and VSCode, each one is a process. ...

What is IPC (Inter-Process Communication)? Modern operating systems run many processes at the same time. But often, these processes need to talk to each other — share data, send signals, or synchronize actions. This is where IPC — Inter-Process Communication comes in. It’s the set of mechanisms that allows processes to exchange information safely. Why do we need IPC? To share data (e.g., a browser rendering process sends results to the UI process). To coordinate actions (e.g., a parent process waits for a child process to finish). To send signals/events (e.g., one service notifies another about new data). Without IPC, each process would live in its own isolated world. ...