Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Rather than using a hard-coded interrupt dispatch table at the hardware level, software interrupts are often implemented at the operating system level as a form of callback function. Interrupt handlers have a multitude of functions, which vary based on what triggered the interrupt and the speed at which the interrupt handler completes its task.
IRQ 9 – Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) system control interrupt on Intel chipsets. [6] And/or left for the use of peripherals (use depends on OS) IRQ 10 – The interrupt is left for the use of peripherals (for example, SCSI or NIC) IRQ 11 – The interrupt is left for the use of peripherals (for example, SCSI or NIC)
A Deferred Procedure Call (DPC) is a Microsoft Windows operating system mechanism which allows high-priority tasks (e.g. an interrupt handler) to defer required but lower-priority tasks for later execution. This permits device drivers and other low-level event consumers to perform the high-priority part of their processing quickly, and schedule ...
Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) are a method of signaling interrupts, using special in-band messages to replace traditional out-of-band signals on dedicated interrupt lines. While message signaled interrupts are more complex to implement in a device, they have some significant advantages over pin-based out-of-band interrupt signalling, such ...
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 ...
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.
Although most modern systems typically use device drivers that directly set the video mode, it is not feasible for hobbyist systems to have a device driver for every video card - a problem that also plagues older, unsupported systems such as Windows 98. Such systems instead can drop into Real mode to switch the video mode, then draw to the ...