The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Remote Procedure Call
RPC

    (RPC) A protocol which allows a
   program running on one host to cause code to be executed on
   another host without the programmer needing to explicitly code
   for this.  RPC is an easy and popular paradigm for
   implementing the client-server model of distributed
   computing.  An RPC is initiated by the caller (client)
   sending request message to a remote system (the server) to
   execute a certain procedure using arguments supplied.  A
   result message is returned to the caller.  There are many
   variations and subtleties in various implementations,
   resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPC
   protocols.

   Sun RPC is defined in RFC 1057 and ONC RPC in RFC
   1831.

   (2003-06-04)