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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.
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 example of a useful DOS software interrupt was interrupt 0x21. By calling it with different parameters in the registers (mostly ah and al) you could access various IO operations, string output and more. [2] Most Unix systems and derivatives do not use software interrupts, with the exception of interrupt 0x80, used to make system calls. This ...
When working with personal computer hardware, installing and removing devices, the system relies on interrupt requests. There are default settings that are configured in the system BIOS and recognized by the operating system. These default settings can be altered by advanced users.
This works if the program was started in real mode, but causes problems when such programs are run in a DPMI-based container on modern operating systems (such as NTVDM under Windows NT or later). Since CLI is a privileged instruction, it triggers a fault into the operating system when the program attempts to use it. The OS then typically stops ...
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.
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 ...
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]