Hardware interrupts were introduced as an optimization, eliminating unproductive waiting time in polling loops, waiting … See more

Interrupt signals may be issued in response to hardware or software events. These are classified as hardware interrupts or software interrupts, respectively. For any particular processor, the number of interrupt ty… See more

Each interrupt signal input is designed to be triggered by either a logic signal level or a particular signal edge (level transition). Level-sensitive inputs continuously request processor service so long as a particular (high or low… See more

The processor samples the interrupt trigger signals or interrupt register during each instruction cycle, and will process the highest priority enabled interrupt found. Regardless of the triggering method, the processor … See more

Interrupts may be fully handled in hardware by the CPU, or may be handled by both the CPU and another component such as a programmable interrupt controller or a southbridge.
If an additio… See more

Interrupts provide low overhead and good latency at low load, but degrade significantly at high interrupt rate unless care is taken to prevent several pathologies. The phenomenon where the overall system performanc… See more

Interrupts are commonly used to service hardware timers, transfer data to and from storage (e.g., disk I/O) and communication interfaces (e.g., UART, Ethernet), handle keyboard and mouse events, and to respond to … See more