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Question

Question about How windows 7 deals with interrupts.

Oct 9, 2014 8:49AM PDT

Hi, first of all I've never used a forum before so sorry if I've done something wrong. I'm an IT student and have been asked to do homework describing how an Operating system such as windows 7 deals with interrupts. After researching on the internet I'm a bit confused because I'm finding a lot of conflicting information. So far my understanding is that an Interrupt is a signal to the CPU from the user, the hardware or the software; letting it know that an event needs attention. Because a computer can only do one thing at a time, interrupts allow it to briefly stop and perform another task allowing it to affectively multi-task. And that each interrupt has its own interrupt handler which handles these interrupts by saving them in a prioritised queue and dealing with them one at a time. I'm not asking that somebody answers the entire question for me, I'd just like some confirmation that this applies to windows 7 or just other/older systems. And does the operating system actually multi-task or just create the illusion that it is multitasking? Thank you Happy

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Answer
There is no one answer.
Oct 10, 2014 1:01AM PDT

As Windows evolved this area changed. Also notable is that with multiple CPU cores it's possible to handle such more than one at a time. You have a choice to make here. Either spend a year or more learning about Windows internals or go with a shorter version that may be incorrect but close enough for everyman.

Since I can't condense years of work into this small space I think the short version is best. That is, with multicore CPUs your classic books on how CPUs work are out of date and some courses start with single core, single thread for very good reasons. A new computer science student would be overwhelmed by what's out today.
Bob

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IRQ
Oct 10, 2014 9:42AM PDT

find wikis on it, that's the easiest. They were doorways for the CPU, so two instructions would not try and occupy the same space at the same time. BIOS controlled, between the system and devices. Later operating systems took over from the BIOS to control the accesses between it and the CPU. That's the very short description.