It is the process of exchanging data and information between processes.

IPC mechanisms are used to enable different processes to communicate with each other and share resources such as memory, files, and hardware devices.

–> IPC is used in a variety of contexts, including operating systems, distributed systems, and parallel computing.

• For example, in an operating system, different processes may need to communicate with each other to coordinate their activities, such as when a parent process creates a child process or when a program needs to send output to another program.
• In a distributed system, IPC is used to enable different nodes or machines on a network to communicate with each other and share data or resources.
• In parallel computing, IPC is used to coordinate the activities of different threads or processes running on multiple processors or cores.

Some common IPC mechanisms include pipes, sockets, shared memory, message queues, signals and semaphores.