Inter-Processor Communication

• Inter-Processor Interrupts (IPI)

  • Wake up processor at boot time
  • Cause a processor to enter an interrupt handler
  • Comes with challenges, such as deadlocks

• Shared Memory

  • Kernel memory will generally be mapped identically when the kernel executes on processors
  • Memory is therefore shared, and can be read or written from any processor
  • Requires consistency and synchronization model
  • Atomic operations, higher level primitives, etc.