Interrupt

In system programming, an interrupt is a signal to the processor emitted by hardware or software indicating an event that needs immediate attention. An interrupt alerts the processor to a high-priority condition requiring the interruption of the current code the processor is executing. The processor responds by suspending its current activities, saving its state, and executing a function called an interrupt handler (or an interrupt service routine, ISR) to deal with the event. This interruption is temporary, and, after the interrupt handler finishes, unless handling the interrupt has emitted a fatal error, the processor resumes normal activities. There are two types of interrupts: hardware interrupts and software interrupts (softirqs). In system programming, an interrupt is a signal to the processor emitted by hardware or software indicating an event that needs immediate attention. An interrupt alerts the processor to a high-priority condition requiring the interruption of the current code the processor is executing. The processor responds by suspending its current activities, saving its state, and executing a function called an interrupt handler (or an interrupt service routine, ISR) to deal with the event. This interruption is temporary, and, after the interrupt handler finishes, unless handling the interrupt has emitted a fatal error, the processor resumes normal activities. There are two types of interrupts: hardware interrupts and software interrupts (softirqs). Hardware interrupts are used by devices to communicate that they require attention from the operating system., or a bare-metal program running on the CPU if there are no OSes. Internally, hardware interrupts are implemented using electronic alerting signals that are sent to the processor from an external device, which is either a part of the computer itself, such as a disk controller, or an external peripheral. For example, pressing a key on the keyboard or moving the mouse triggers hardware interrupts that cause the processor to read the keystroke or mouse position. Unlike the software type (described below), hardware interrupts are asynchronous and can occur in the middle of instruction execution, requiring additional care in programming. The act of initiating a hardware interrupt is referred to as an interrupt request (IRQ). Different devices are usually associated with different interrupts using a unique value associated with each interrupt. This makes it possible to know which hardware device caused which interrupts. These interrupt values are often called IRQ lines, or just interrupt lines. Software interrupts are also called exceptions. Unlike interrupts, exceptions occur synchronously with respect to the processor clock. That is why sometimes they are referred to as synchronous interrupts. A software interrupt is caused either by an exceptional condition in the processor itself, or a special instruction in the instruction set which causes an interrupt when it is executed. The former is often called a trap or exception and is used for errors or events occurring during program execution that is exceptional enough that they cannot be handled within the program itself. For example, a divide-by-zero exception will be thrown if the processor's arithmetic logic unit is commanded to divide a number by zero as this instruction is an error and impossible. The operating system will catch this exception, and can decide what to do about it: usually aborting the process and displaying an error message. Software interrupt instructions can function similarly to subroutine calls and are used for a variety of purposes, such as to request services from device drivers, like interrupts sent to and from a disk controller to request reading or writing of data to and from the disk. Each interrupt has its own interrupt handler. The number of hardware interrupts is limited by the number of interrupt request (IRQ) lines to the processor, but there may be hundreds of different software interrupts. Interrupts are a commonly used technique for computer multitasking, especially in real-time computing. Such a system is said to be interrupt-driven. Interrupts are similar to signals, the difference being that signals are used for inter-process communication (IPC), mediated by the kernel (possibly via system calls) and handled by processes, while interrupts are mediated by the processor and handled by the kernel. The kernel may pass an interrupt as a signal to the process that caused it (typical examples are SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, SIGILL and SIGFPE). Hardware interrupts were introduced as an optimization, eliminating unproductive waiting time in polling loops, waiting for external events. The first system to use this approach was the DYSEAC, completed in 1954, although earlier systems provided error trap functions. Interrupts may be implemented in hardware as a distinct component with control lines, or they may be integrated into the memory subsystem. If implemented in hardware as a distinct component, an interrupt controller circuit such as the IBM PC's Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) may be connected between the interrupting device and the processor's interrupt pin to multiplex several sources of interrupt onto the one or two CPU lines typically available. If implemented as part of the memory controller, interrupts are mapped into the system's memory address space.