INTERRUPT

Interrupt Definition
• An interrupt is a signal from a device attached to a computer or from
a program within the computer that requires the operating system to
stop and figure out what to do next.

• An interrupt is a signal emitted by hardware or software that requests

the processor to suspend its current execution and service the
occurred interrupt.
Types of Interrupt
• Hardware Interrupt
• Software Interrupt
Hardware Interrupt
• External Interrupt: It comes from I/O devices, timing device, power
failure or from any other external hardware
• Internal Interrupt: Arises illegal or erroneous use of an instruction or
data and any overflow/underflow condition.
Types of Hardware Interrupt
• Maskable Interrupt − The hardware interrupts that can be delayed
when a highest priority interrupt has occurred to the processor.

• Non Maskable Interrupt − The hardware that cannot be delayed and

immediately be serviced by the processor.
Software Interrupt
• The interrupt signal generated from internal devices and software
programs need to access any system call then software interrupts are
present.
• A software interrupt is initiated by executing an instruction.
• This type of interrupt can be used by the programmer to initiate an
interrupt procedure at any desired point in the program.
Interrupt Service Routine
• An interrupt service routine (ISR) is a software routine that hardware
invokes in response to an interrupt. ISR examines an interrupt and
determines how to handle it executes the handling, and then returns
a logical interrupt value.
Diagramatic Representation of Interrupt