Rationale for a Queueable Object Distributed Interprocess Communication System

We consider the problem of designing an interprocess communication system usable as a base for writing real-time operating and applications systems in a distributed environment where processes may be connected by anything from shared virtual memory to radios. By requiring an interface that minimizes the code an application program must devote to communications, a facility of substantially higher level than basic message passing becomes necessary. This is largely a consequence of four major performance problems with interprocess communication in a distributed environment: system reliability, server congestion, throughput, and response time. We summarize these problems, and introduce an interprocess communication system based on two mechanisms: queueable objects and connectable objects. We briefly review our experience with a limited implementation of queueable objects.