Differences between version 7 and previous revision of InterruptHandler.
Other diffs: Previous Major Revision, Previous Author, or view the Annotated Edit History
| Newer page: | version 7 | Last edited on Monday, October 18, 2004 9:49:03 am | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 6 | Last edited on Monday, October 18, 2004 4:48:25 am | by StuartYeates | Revert |
@@ -2,4 +2,9 @@
One specific InterruptHandler is of paramount importance in modern OperatingSystem~s: the timer [IRQ] invokes a handler which drives the scheduler that distributes [CPU] time among tasks. Without this [IRQ] and its handler, preemptive multitasking would not be possible.
Note that this is different from a [Signal] handler, which is called by the [Kernel] through normal control flow means. Note that software can trigger interrupts, and InterruptHandler~s sometimes send [Signal]s. The concepts remain distinct, though, despite having many things in common. In general an interupt ([IRQ] on x86) is to the kernel as a signal is to an application.
+
+----
+On linux, try running
+ procinfo -n 1
+to see counts of the number of interrupts that your kernel receives, and other things such as the number of context switches. the "-n __1__" means update the display every second.
