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What is shared memory in the OS?
Shared memory system is the fundamental model of inter process communication. In a shared memory system, in the address space region the cooperating communicate with each other by establishing the shared memory region.
Shared memory concept works on fastest inter process communication.
If the process wants to initiate the communication and it has some data to share, then establish the shared memory region in its address space. After that, another process wants to communicate and tries to read the shared data, and must attach itself to the initiating process’s shared address space.
Let us see the working condition of the shared memory system step by step.
Working
In the Shared Memory system, the cooperating processes communicate, to exchange the data with each other. Because of this, the cooperating processes establish a shared region in their memory. The processes share data by reading and writing the data in the shared segment of the processes.
Let us discuss it by considering two processes. The diagram is shown below −
Let the two cooperating processes P1 and P2. Both the processes P1 and P2, have their different address spaces. Now let us assume, P1 wants to share some data with P2.
So, P1 and P2 will have to perform the following steps −
Step 1 − Process P1 has some data to share with process P2. First P1 takes initiative and establishes a shared memory region in its own address space and stores the data or information to be shared in its shared memory region.
Step 2 − Now, P2 requires the information stored in the shared segment of P1. So, process P2 needs to attach itself to the shared address space of P1. Now, P2 can read out the data from there.
Step 3 − The two processes can exchange information by reading and writing data in the shared segment of the process.
Advantages
The advantages of Shared Memory are as follows −
Shared memory is a faster inter process communication system.
It allows cooperating processes to access the same pieces of data concurrently.
It speeds up the computation power of the system and divides long tasks into smaller sub-tasks and can be executed in parallel.
Modularity is achieved in a shared memory system.
Users can perform multiple tasks at a time.
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