Asynchronous Method Invocation (AMI) is the term used to describe the client-side support for the asynchronous programming model. AMI supports both oneway and twoway requests, but unlike their synchronous counterparts, AMI requests never block the calling thread. When a client issues an AMI request, the Ice run time hands the message off to the local transport buffer or, if the buffer is currently full, queues the request for later delivery. The application can then continue its activities and poll or wait for completion of the invocation, or receive a callback when the invocation completes.
AMI is transparent to the server: there is no way for the server to tell whether a client sent a request synchronously or asynchronously.