brpc is a high-performance C++ RPC framework and network programming library designed for building distributed systems. It functions as a multi-protocol RPC server capable of hosting and detecting multiple communication protocols, including gRPC, Thrift, HTTP, Redis, and Memcached, on a single TCP port.
The project distinguishes itself through high-throughput data transport and memory efficiency, utilizing RDMA-based transport to bypass the kernel TCP stack and zero-copy memory management to eliminate data duplication. It also implements the Raft algorithm for consensus-based state replication to maintain consistency and high availability across distributed nodes.
The framework provides a broad suite of capabilities for distributed system management, including dynamic service discovery via Consul or DNS, advanced traffic management with latency-based routing and circuit breaking, and comprehensive observability through Prometheus integration and built-in performance profiling. It also supports various communication patterns such as bi-directional streaming, asynchronous execution, and RESTful traffic serving.