What is Interrupt?
A CPU mechanism that temporarily suspends the current task to handle a request, for example from an external device, and then returns to the original task.
Field: CPUs and architecture
Interrupt in the explanations
It behaves like switches in parallel, used for control that acts if any condition holds—for example, combining several interrupt requests, or setting bits in bitwise operations (x OR 0x80 sets the top bit).
When is the output of a 2-input OR gate 0?It is used to select requests in interrupt controllers and to find the leading 1 when normalizing floating-point numbers (leading-zero detection).
Which circuit outputs, in binary, the number of the highest…It is used for I²C buses, interrupt lines and level shifting between different supply voltages.
When several open-drain outputs are connected to one signal…
Questions that mention Interrupt (5)
- When is the output of a 2-input OR gate 0?
- Which circuit outputs, in binary, the number of the highest-priority input when several inputs are 1 at the same time?
- When several open-drain outputs are connected to one signal line with a pull-up resistor, how does the line behave?
- Which CPU mechanism temporarily suspends the current task to give priority to handling requests such as those from external devices?
- Which mechanism transfers data directly between peripherals and memory without going through the CPU?
Related terms
DMA (direct memory access) Amdahl's law Branch prediction Cache coherency Cache memory DVFS (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling) GPU Instruction set architecture (ISA) IPC Microcontroller