AMICO Protocol V2

Protocol introduction

The new protocol AMICO V2 introduce the concept of Active Message (AM). It is a new technology to improve the performance of thread/process communications.
There are two kind of process communications:

• Inter Process Communication (IPC): based on message exchange
  > Benefits: simple implementation, high performances
  > Disadvantages: needs messages traslation to functions
  

• Remote Procedure Call (RPC): direct remote calling of functions
  > Benefits: more trasparent and useful for the user/developer
  > Disadvantages: complex implementation, low performances (need server service. Ex: DBus)
  

• Active Message (AM): send a class instance to the remote target and execute action() on remote target
  > Benefits: simple implementation, high performances, more trasparent and useful for the user/developer
  > Disadvangages: ?
  

In AMICO2 the Active Message is a mix of the two technologies able of join the benefits and reduce the disadvantages.

        ___________________________      __________________
       |                           |    |                  |
       |          Process          |    |      Process     |
       |  ______           ______  |    |                  |
       | |      |         |      | |    |                  |
       | |  Th  |         |  Th  | |    |                  |
       | |      |         |      | |    |                  |
       |_|______|_________|______|_|    |__________________|
             |                |                  |
             |AM              |AM                |AM
   .---------|----------------|------------------|-------------.
   |  _______|_______   ______|________   _______|_______      |
   | |               | |               | |               |     |
   | |   AMICO_Link  | |   AMICO_Link  | |   AMICO_Link  |     |
   | |_______________| |_______________| |_______________|     |
   |         |                |                  |             |
   |         |                |                  |             |
   |         |----------------'                  |             |
   |         |  Memory-to-Memory                 |             |
   |         |                                   |             |
   |         |               Socket              |             |
   |         '-----------------------------------'             |
   |                         AMICO2                            |
   '-----------------------------------------------------------'

The Active Message