OpenBinder
Encyclopedia
OpenBinder is a system for Inter-process communication
. It was developed at Be Inc.
and then Palm, Inc.
and has more recently been used in the Android operating system
developed by Google.
OpenBinder allows processes to present interfaces which may be called by other threads. Each process maintains a thread pool which may be used to service such requests. OpenBinder takes care of reference counting, recursion back into the original thread, and of course the inter-process communication itself. On the Linux version of OpenBinder, the communication is achieved using ioctl
s on a given filehandle, communicating with a kernel driver.
Inter-process communication
In computing, Inter-process communication is a set of methods for the exchange of data among multiple threads in one or more processes. Processes may be running on one or more computers connected by a network. IPC methods are divided into methods for message passing, synchronization, shared...
. It was developed at Be Inc.
Be Inc.
Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray....
and then Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
and has more recently been used in the Android operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
developed by Google.
OpenBinder allows processes to present interfaces which may be called by other threads. Each process maintains a thread pool which may be used to service such requests. OpenBinder takes care of reference counting, recursion back into the original thread, and of course the inter-process communication itself. On the Linux version of OpenBinder, the communication is achieved using ioctl
Ioctl
In computing, ioctl, short for input/output control, is a system call for device-specific operations and other operations which cannot be expressed by regular system calls. It takes a parameter specifying a request code; the effect of a call depends completely on the request code. Request codes are...
s on a given filehandle, communicating with a kernel driver.