INPUT OUTPUT ORGANISTATION

Interrupt: Interrupt is a signal from an I/O device to let the CPU know that it is ready
to transfer data and that it is requesting service from the CPU.
As soon as the CPU receives this signal, it leaves its current unfinished task as it is and
branches to the interrupting devices interrupt service routine and executes it to
process the transfer. When finished, CPU again comes back to its unfinished task and
continues with it.
Different types of interrupt:
There are generally three types of interrupts, which are:
External Interrupts:
Such type of interrupt may come from any external sources like, I/O devices when
they are ready to transfer data, from a timing device to signify that the time of an
event is over, it may occur due to some power failures etc.
Internal Interrupts:
Such type of interrupt may occur due to some illegal or erroneous conditions in the
program (i.e. illegal or erroneous use of instructions or data in the program).
Whenever there are internal errors like register overflow, stack overflow, attempt to
divide by zero etc. in the program, they give rise to internal interrupts.
Software Interrupts:
Such type of interrupt may be embedded or incorporated in the program as an
instruction by a programmer and are thus initiated by executing that instruction. So if
the programmer wants to initiate any sort of interrupt procedure at any desired point
in the program, he may write an interrupt instruction at that point in the program.
e.g.INT32 (say). On execution of this interrupt instruction, control branches to the ISR
of the number32 interrupt.
Vectored Interrupt

Non-Vectored Interrupt

1. In this method, the branch address (i.e.

the address of the ISR) is supplied by the
interrupting I/O itself and the processor
branches accordingly.

1. In this method, the branch address (i.e.

the address of the ISR) is always assigned
to a fixed location in the memory and the
processor always branches to that
particular location.
2. The address of the service routine
needs to be supplied externally by the
device.

2. The address of the service routine is

hard-wired.