中断

今天看《现代操作系统》看到一句话，...explain a little more about how the illusion of multiple sequential processes is maintained on one (or each) CPU. Associated with each I/O class is a location called the interrupt vector.....

然后我就觉得有点好奇，多进程的维护跟中断有关系吗？一搜发现：“中断是进程切换的必要不充分条件”。看来对中断的了解还是太片面了。以下摘自维基百科，算是对中断的简单介绍吧。

In systems programming, an interrupt is a signal to the processor emitted by hardware or software indicating an event that needs immediate attention. An interrupt alerts the processor to a high-priority condition requiring the interruption of the current code the processor is executing. The processor responds by suspending its current activities, saving its state, and executing a function called an interrupt handler (or an interrupt service routine, ISR) to deal with the event. This interruption is temporary, and, after the interrupt handler finishes, the processor resumes normal activities. There are two types of interrupts: hardware interrupts and software interrupts.
中断是发给CPU的一个信号，该信号由软/硬件发出，告诉CPU当前有一个事件急需它立刻暂停手头的工作去立即处理。CPU在接到中断信号后会暂停当前工作，并将当前工作的一些状态信息等暂存，然后跑去执行中断处理程序。中断都是暂时的，中断处理结束后，cpu会回来接着执行未完成的工作。中断一般分为两种类型：硬件中断和软件中断。
Hardware interrupts are used by devices to communicate that they require attention from the operating system.Internally, hardware interrupts are implemented using electronic alerting signals that are sent to the processor from an external device, which is either a part of the computer itself, such as a disk controller, or an external peripheral. For example, pressing a key on the keyboard or moving the mouse triggers hardware interrupts that cause the processor to read the keystroke or mouse position. Unlike the software type (described below), hardware interrupts are asynchronous and can occur in the middle of instruction execution, requiring additional care in programming. The act of initiating a hardware interrupt is referred to as an interrupt request (IRQ).

A software interrupt is caused either by an exceptional condition in the processor itself, or a special instruction in the instruction set which causes an interrupt when it is executed. The former is often called a trap or exception and is used for errors or events occurring during program execution that are exceptional enough that they cannot be handled within the program itself. For example, if the processor's arithmetic logic unit is commanded to divide a number by zero, this impossible demand will cause a divide-by-zero exception, perhaps causing the computer to abandon the calculation or display an error message. Software interrupt instructions function similarly to subroutine calls and are used for a variety of purposes, such as to request services from low-level system software such as device drivers. For example, computers often use software interrupt instructions to communicate with the disk controller to request data be read or written to the disk.


Each interrupt has its own interrupt handler. The number of hardware interrupts is limited by the number of interrupt request (IRQ) lines to the processor, but there may be hundreds of different software interrupts. Interrupts are a commonly used technique for computer multitasking, especially in real-time computing. Such a system is said to be interrupt-driven.