Understanding Interrupts

Each hardware interrupt has an interrupt level, trigger, and interrupt priority.

The following sections describe various interrupt components:

Interrupt Level
The interrupt level defines the source of the interrupt and is often referred to as the interrupt source.
Interrupt Trigger
There are two types of trigger mechanisms, level-triggered interrupts and edge-triggered interrupts.
Interrupt Priorities
The interrupt priority defines which of a set of pending interrupts is serviced first. INTMAX is the most favored interrupt priority and INTBASE is the least favored interrupt priority. The interrupt priorities for bus interrupts range from INTCLASS0 to INTCLASS3. The rest of the interrupt priorities are reserved for the base kernel. Interrupts that cannot be serviced within the time limits specified for bus interrupts qualify as off-level interrupts.

Parent topic: Kernel Services

Related concepts

System Calls