ipc_shared_ptr: A Publish/Subscribe-Aware Smart Pointer for Cross-Process Object Lifetime Management

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Ishikawa-Aso, Takahiro, Yano, Atsushi, Imai, Koichi, Azumi, Takuya, Kato, Shinpei
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Ishikawa-Aso, Takahiro
Yano, Atsushi
Imai, Koichi
Azumi, Takuya
Kato, Shinpei
author_facet Ishikawa-Aso, Takahiro
Yano, Atsushi
Imai, Koichi
Azumi, Takuya
Kato, Shinpei
contents True zero-copy Inter-Process Communication (IPC) in publish/subscribe (pub/sub) middleware such as Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) requires subscribers to reference message objects in publisher-owned shared memory. Objects must not be reclaimed while referenced, yet must eventually be reclaimed, with correct handling of crash recovery and Transient Local QoS retention requirements. We propose ipc_shared_ptr, a pub/sub-aware smart pointer for cross-process message lifetime management. ipc_shared_ptr exploits pub/sub structural properties to specialize Birrell's reference listing, limiting global metadata updates to per-subscriber 0<->1 transitions and achieving an order-of-magnitude reduction in global communication over general-purpose distributed reference counting. We analyze the key metadata management tradeoff: scalability versus implementation simplicity. Owner-driven reclaim offers greater scalability, but concurrent membership changes and reclamation decisions produce races that widen the correctness-verification state space. Single-writer achieves structural atomicity, eliminating this complexity at the cost of a centralized bottleneck. iceoryx2 (owner-driven reclaim) and Agnocast -- a true zero-copy ROS 2 IPC middleware sharing the publisher's heap with subscribers and adopting ipc_shared_ptr with single-writer -- embody each architecture. Comparative evaluation at the scale of Autoware -- the largest open-source ROS 2 application -- confirms that single-writer achieves sufficient scalability: at 200 topics, two subscribers per topic and 100 Hz, Agnocast's E2E p99.9 is 2.9x lower than iceoryx2's, justifying implementation simplicity over owner-driven reclaim.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_04226
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ipc_shared_ptr: A Publish/Subscribe-Aware Smart Pointer for Cross-Process Object Lifetime Management
Ishikawa-Aso, Takahiro
Yano, Atsushi
Imai, Koichi
Azumi, Takuya
Kato, Shinpei
Operating Systems
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Robotics
True zero-copy Inter-Process Communication (IPC) in publish/subscribe (pub/sub) middleware such as Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) requires subscribers to reference message objects in publisher-owned shared memory. Objects must not be reclaimed while referenced, yet must eventually be reclaimed, with correct handling of crash recovery and Transient Local QoS retention requirements. We propose ipc_shared_ptr, a pub/sub-aware smart pointer for cross-process message lifetime management. ipc_shared_ptr exploits pub/sub structural properties to specialize Birrell's reference listing, limiting global metadata updates to per-subscriber 0<->1 transitions and achieving an order-of-magnitude reduction in global communication over general-purpose distributed reference counting. We analyze the key metadata management tradeoff: scalability versus implementation simplicity. Owner-driven reclaim offers greater scalability, but concurrent membership changes and reclamation decisions produce races that widen the correctness-verification state space. Single-writer achieves structural atomicity, eliminating this complexity at the cost of a centralized bottleneck. iceoryx2 (owner-driven reclaim) and Agnocast -- a true zero-copy ROS 2 IPC middleware sharing the publisher's heap with subscribers and adopting ipc_shared_ptr with single-writer -- embody each architecture. Comparative evaluation at the scale of Autoware -- the largest open-source ROS 2 application -- confirms that single-writer achieves sufficient scalability: at 200 topics, two subscribers per topic and 100 Hz, Agnocast's E2E p99.9 is 2.9x lower than iceoryx2's, justifying implementation simplicity over owner-driven reclaim.
title ipc_shared_ptr: A Publish/Subscribe-Aware Smart Pointer for Cross-Process Object Lifetime Management
topic Operating Systems
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04226