Interrupt Request

Tags

comp-arch

Refers to a request each hardware device has to give at boot to register the numbered interrupts it'll use. The system uses this to attach the appropriate interrupt handlers at those interrupts. For example you don't want to associate a keyboard interrupt handler to a hardware clock.

If two devices try to register the same IRQ interrupts will sometimes be dispatched to the wrong handler which in the best case locks up the device and worst case cause the OS to flake out or crash.