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BIOS interrupt calls perform hardware control or I/O functions requested by a program, return system information to the program, or do both. A key element of the purpose of BIOS calls is abstraction - the BIOS calls perform generally defined functions, and the specific details of how those functions are executed on the particular hardware of the system are encapsulated in the BIOS and hidden ...
A hardware interrupt is a condition related to the state of the hardware that may be signaled by an external hardware device, e.g., an interrupt request (IRQ) line on a PC, or detected by devices embedded in processor logic (e.g., the CPU timer in IBM System/370), to communicate that the device needs attention from the operating system (OS) [7] or, if there is no OS, from the bare metal ...
In a computer, an interrupt request (or IRQ) is a hardware signal sent to the processor that temporarily stops a running program and allows a special program, an interrupt handler, to run instead. Hardware interrupts are used to handle events such as receiving data from a modem or network card , key presses, or mouse movements.
With regard to SPARC, the non-maskable interrupt (NMI), despite having the highest priority among interrupts, can be prevented from occurring through the use of an interrupt mask. [1] An NMI is often used when response time is critical or when an interrupt should never be disabled during normal system operation.
For example, hardware timers send interrupts to the CPU at regular intervals. Most operating systems execute a HLT instruction when there is no immediate work to be done, putting the processor into an idle state. In Windows NT, for example, this instruction is run in the "System Idle Process". On x86 processors, the opcode of HLT is 0xF4.
In computer systems programming, an interrupt handler, also known as an interrupt service routine or ISR, is a special block of code associated with a specific interrupt condition. Interrupt handlers are initiated by hardware interrupts, software interrupt instructions, or software exceptions , and are used for implementing device drivers or ...
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MSI (first defined in PCI 2.2) permits a device to allocate 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 interrupts. The device is programmed with an address to write to (this address is generally a control register in an interrupt controller), and a 16-bit data word to identify it. The interrupt number is added to the data word to identify the interrupt. [1]