What is the primary function of Remote-procedure calls (RPCs)?

Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) are designed primarily to enable communication between software applications running on different systems or nodes. The fundamental purpose of RPCs is to allow a program to execute code on a remote node as if it were being executed locally. This means that a process can request services or send commands to another process that is located on a different server or device, facilitating distributed computing.

In a typical RPC operation, the client invokes a procedure on the remote server, which processes the request and sends back the response to the client. This abstraction simplifies the complexity of networking for developers, as they can call remote functions in a way similar to calling local functions.

While some options may relate to aspects involved in RPCs—such as optimization or resource management—they do not capture the core function of RPCs, which lies in executing code on remote nodes. The focus of RPC is specifically on the ability to perform remote operations rather than handling local tasks or optimizing the network performance directly.