I have a Java-program which communicates with a C++ program using a socket on localhost. Can I expect to gain any performance (either latency, bandwidth, or both) by moving to use a native OS pipe? I'm primarily interested in Windows at the moment, but any insight related to Unix/Linux/OSX is welcome as well.
EDIT: Clarification: both programs run on the same host, currently communicating via a socket, i.e. by making a TCP/IP connection to localhost:. My question was what are the potential performance benefits of switching to using (local) named pipes (Windows), or their Unix equivalent (AF_UNIX domain socket?).
Ken is right. Named pipes are definitely faster on Windows. On UNIX & Linux, you'd want a UDS or local pipe. Same thing, different name.
Anything other than sockets will be faster for local communication. This includes memory mapped files, local pipes, shared memory, COM, etc.
The first google hit turned up this, which clocked NT4 and XP and found named pipes (that's what you meant, right?) to be faster on Windows.
For local process communication pipe are definitely the faster. Here is google's benchmark: https://sites.google.com/site/rikkus/sysv-ipc-vs-unix-pipes-vs-unix-sockets I think even though socket is flexible but it can also lead to bad code design. While using pipe it enforce you to design the whole structure of you project things like which process should be the parent which should be the children and how they cooperate(this will determine how pipes are established) and assign function to process. So it will design you whole project in a hierarchical way and easy to maintain.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1882886/performance-of-sockets-vs-pipes