message passing
One of the two techniques for communicating between parallel processes (the
other being shared memory).
A common use of message passing is for communication in a parallel computer. A
process running on one processor may send a message to a process running on the
same processor or another. The actual transmission of the message is usually
handled by the run-time support of the language in which the processes are
written, or by the operating system.
Message passing scales better than shared memory, which is generally used in
computers with relatively few processors. This is because the total
communications bandwidth usually increases with the number of processors.
A message passing system provides primitives for sending and receiving messages.
These primitives may by either synchronous or asynchronous or both. A
synchronous send will not complete (will not allow the sender to proceed) until
the receiving process has received the message. This allows the sender to know
whether the message was received successfully or not (like when you speak to
someone on the telephone). An asynchronous send simply queues the message for
transmission without waiting for it to be received (like posting a letter). A
synchronous receive primitive will wait until there is a message to read whereas
an asynchronous receive will return immediately, either with a message or to say
that no message has arrived.
Messages may be sent to a named process or to a named mailbox which may be
readable by one or many processes.
Transmission involves determining the location of the recipient and then
choosing a route to reach that location. The message may be transmitted in one
go or may be split into packets which are transmitted independently (e.g. using
wormhole routing) and reassembled at the receiver. The message passing system
must ensure that sufficient memory is available to buffer the message at its
destination and at intermediate nodes.
Messages may be typed or untyped at the programming language level. They may
have a priority, allowing the receiver to read the highest priority messages
first.
Some message passing computers are the MIT J-Machine, the
Illinois Concert Project and transputer-based systems.
Object-oriented programming uses message passing between objects as a metaphor
for procedure call.
(1994-11-11)
Nearby terms:
Message Digest 5 « message digest function « Message
Handling System « message passing » Message
Passing Interface » message switching » Message
Transfer Agent
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