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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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
An interrupt vector table (IVT) is a data structure that associates a list of interrupt handlers with a list of interrupt requests in a table of interrupt vectors. Each entry of the interrupt vector table, called an interrupt vector, is the address of an interrupt handler (also known as ISR). While the concept is common across processor ...
Overall performance of the system as well as network throughput can suffer as a result. Polling is an alternative to interrupt-based processing. The kernel can periodically check for the arrival of incoming network packets without being interrupted, which eliminates the overhead of interrupt processing.
The interrupt priority level (IPL) is a part of the current system interrupt state, which indicates the interrupt requests that will currently be accepted. The IPL may be indicated in hardware by the registers in a programmable interrupt controller , or in software by a bitmask or integer value and source code of threads.
Maximum interrupt latency is largely determined by the methods an OS uses for interrupt handling. For example, most processors allow programs to disable interrupts, putting off the execution of interrupt handlers, in order to protect critical sections of code. During the execution of such a critical section, all interrupt handlers that cannot ...