Using an OS with memory protection between processes doesn't make it impossible to use shared memory regions to pass messages between processes efficiently. Around twenty years ago, I worked on a project that built support for various telephony protocols on AIX. Amongst other things, we used System V IPC and shared memory to send signalling information and voice data between processes. We were able to achieve fairly low latencies using this approach; I don't remember the precise numbers but this was the sort of system where a few 10s of ms of latency would give the user a noticeably worse experience. Admittedly, this was on much more powerful hardware than the original Amiga (by this time, we had PowerPC CPUs running at hundreds of MHz) but I don't see why it couldn't have worked on older hardware.
Yes, sorry, I should've clarified that newer AmigaOS versions couldn't add memory protection without breaking compatibility with old apps, due to weaknesses in the APIs.
Got it, sounds like I misunderstood the point you were making there. Makes sense (and tbh that's a problem that afflicts most of the personal computer operating systems from that era).
