Question

I need to move large amounts (~10^6 floats) between multiple c++ threads and a fortran thread. At the moment we use windows shared memory to move very small piece of data, mainly for communication, and then save the file to a proprietary format to move the data. I’ve been asked to look at moving the bulk of the data via shared memory, but looking at the shared memory techniques in windows (seemingly a character buffer) this looks like a mess. Another possibility is boost’s interprocess communication, but not sure how to use that from fortran, or if it’s a good idea. Another idea was to use a database like sqlite.

I’m just wondering if anyone had any experience or would like to comment, as this is a little over my head at the moment.

Thanks very much
Jim

Answer 1

Use pipes. If you can inherit handles between processes, you can use anonym pipes, when not, you have to use named pipes. Also, threads share the address space, so you’re probably thinking of processes when you say threads.