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If you are eating your lunch and the phone rings, you stop eating to answer the phone. Your lunch has been interrupted.

On a computer it is about the same. The computer is busy doing a task (recalculating a spread sheet) and there is something arriving on the network for the computer. The network signals the CPU that it needs immediate attention by changing the state of the interrupt request pin (IRQ) on the CPU. This causes the CPU to stop what it is doing to attend to the network card. This is a hardware interrupt.

There are also software interrupts that are a CPU instruction that a program can make use of to do things like reading or writing to a hard/floppy disk. When the CPU is dealing with a hardware interrupt it will not accept any new interrupts preventing an interrupt being interrupted.

Hardware like a mouse or soundcard would often have a TSR (terminate and stay resident). The TSR would be the necessary interrupts for hardware device.

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11y ago

An interrupt is a signal (hardware) or condition (software) that causes the executing program to stop, save its state, and do a function call to service the signal or condition. Once the servicing is complete, the service routine does a return from interrupt sequence, effectively a return from function call, that allows the processor to continue doing what it was doing before the interrupt.

In the 8085, the hardware interrupts are TRAP, RST7.5, RST6.5, RST5.5, and INTR. The software interrupts are RST0, RST1, RST2, RST3, RST4, RST5, RST6, and RST7.

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An interrupt is a signal (hardware) or condition (software) that causes the executing program to stop, save its state, and do a function call to service the signal or condition. Once the servicing is complete, the service routine does a return from interrupt sequence, effectively a return from function call, that allows the processor to continue doing what it was doing before the interrupt.

In the 8085, the hardware interrupts are TRAP, RST7.5, RST6.5, RST5.5, and INTR. The software interrupts are RST0, RST1, RST2, RST3, RST4, RST5, RST6, and RST7.

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A signal informing that an event has occured.

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it is an mechanism by which an device can suspend the normal execution of the processor and get itself serviced.

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Q: What is an interrupt in computer software?
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Related questions

What is a TrapHandler?

A trap handler, also called an interrupt handler or interrupt service routine (ISR) is a program that executes when predefined events occur in a computer. There are software and hardware interrupts. An interrupt causes the computer's processor to stop running its current task and immediately run the trap handler to service the interrupt.


What is an 8085 interrupt?

There are 2 types interrupts in 8085 such as: 1)hardware interrupt 2)software interrupt


HOW IS SOFTWARE INTERRUPT INITIATED?

Interrupt signals initiated by programs are called software interrupts. A software interrupt is also called a trap or anexception. A signal informing a program that an event has occurred. When a program receives an interrupt signal, it takes a specified action (which can be to ignore the signal). Interrupt signals can cause a program to suspend itself temporarily to service the interrupt. Interrupt signals can come from a variety of sources. For example, every keystroke generates an interrupt signal. Interrupts can also be generated by other devices, such as a printer , to indicate that some event has occurred. PCs support 256 types of software interrupts and 15 hardware interrupts. Each type of software interrupt is associated with an interrupt handler -- a routine that takes control when the interrupt occurs. For example, when you press a key on your keyboard, this triggers a specific interrupt handler. The complete list of interrupts and associated interrupt handlers is stored in a table called the interrupt vector table , which resides in the first 1 K of addressable memory.


Difference between software interrupt and hardware inerrupt?

Hardware Interrupt: Each CPU has External Interrupt lines(about 7). Other external devices line keyboard, Mouse, Other controllers can send signals to CPU asynchronously. Software Interrupt:is an interrupt generated with in a processor by executing an instruction . Software interrupt are often used to implemented system calls because they implemented a subroutine call with a CPU ring level change.


What are hardware and software interrupts in microprocessors?

(Q)What are Hardware and software interrupt? draw the block daigram of 8259 interrupt controller and explain in brief..


What is the difference between software and hardware interrupt?

The difference is that a hardware interrupt is a signal relayed to a system's CPU directly because of some piece of hardware, such as a keyboard or mouse. A software interrupt is a signal sent to indicate that something within a piece of software requires attention.


Name of instruction to reset the interrupt?

software interrupts


Which type of interrupt can not be masked by software?

The TRAP interrupt can not be masked by software, unless there is hardware in place to allow that, perhaps by anding an output bit with the TRAP request line.


What is interrupt conflicts in computers?

Intrrup conflicts are when one device in a computer takes the interrupt from other device in the os. Intrrup conflicts are when one device in a computer takes the interrupt from other device in the os.


What r the functions of interrupt initiated Input Output?

software


What is software interrupt with examples?

Interrupt generated by executing an instruction is called software interrupt. It's also called 'trap'. Software interrupts are generally used to make system calls i.e. to request operating system to perform an I/O operation or to run a new program.Examples:C++:A cout or cin statement would generate a software interrupt because it would make a system call to print something.A fork() statement in Linux would generate a software interrupt because it would make a system call to create a new process.Assembly IA32:The instruction int 21h would generate a software interrupt which would request something from operating system (depending on the register values).


How the interrupt can be masked or unmasked in 8086?

The 8086 interrupt priorities are concerned ,software interrupt have the highest priority,followed by NMI ,followed by INTR.The lowest priority signals are unmaskable interrupts.