Who said anything about serializing? To coordinate multiple processes via a file-backed interface, you still might have to wait for the disk (unless you're usin

Who said anything about serializing? To coordinate multiple processes via a file-backed interface, you still might have to wait for the disk (unless you're using /dev/shm), but you don't necessarily have to serialize/deserialize data. Most people tend to confuse the two. You can cast bytes from a memory-mapped file just fine, if you trust the file/other writers, or are willing to sacrifice some safety. There are also a lot of serialization systems that are simple/fast enough as to basically be structs, e.g. flatbuffers: https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/ https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/. Even those still don't avoid that pesky copy, though; for that you'll have to interact with raw memory and hope it's in the right layout for your purposes.