The Win32 API provides RPC to enable applications to call functions remotely. Therefore, RPC makes IPC as easy as calling a function. RPC operates between processes on a single computer or on different computers on a network.
The RPC provided by the Win32 API is compliant with the Open Software Foundation (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). This means that Win32-based applications that use RPC are able to communicate with applications running with other operating systems that support DCE. RPC automatically supports data conversion to account for different hardware architectures and for byte-ordering between dissimilar environments.
RPC clients and servers are tightly coupled but still maintain high performance. The system makes extensive use of RPC to facilitate a client-server relationship between different parts of the operating system.
Key Point RPC is a function-level interface, with support for automatic data conversion and for communications with other operating systems. Using RPC, you can create high-performance, tightly coupled distributed applications. For more information, see Microsoft RPC Components.