When a processor receives an interrupt, the normal flow of whatever program it is running stops and control is passed to another program (or a different part of the same program). A more low-level description is to say that the CPU stops what it was doing, stores its status somewhere and jumps to another area of memory and starts running whatever code is there. A CPU The exact term processor is a sub-system of a data processing system which processes received information after it has been encoded into data by the input sub-system. ... In computer science, an interrupt is a signal from a device which typically results in a context switch: that is, the processor sets aside what its doing and does something else. ... // A computer program or software program (usually abbreviated to a program) is a step-by-step list of instructions written for a particular computer architecture in a particular computer programming language. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
The destination to which the CPU jumps for a given interrupt is termed the interrupt vector.
Generally, most computer system designs will incorporate a list of such vectors; this is termed the interrupt vector table or dispatch table.
For more information, see the entry for interrupt. In computer science, an interrupt is a signal from a device which typically results in a context switch: that is, the processor sets aside what its doing and does something else. ...
An interruptvector is a 4-byte value of the form offset:segment, which represents the address of a routine to be called when the CPU receives an interrupt.
The interruptvector table is a feature of the Intel 80x86/8088 family of microprocessors.
Because each interrupt is a 4-byte value, the maximum number of vectors that can be stored in the interruptvector table is 256.
Interrupt routines should be kept short and sweet so that the main part of the program executes correctly e.g.
This is a general description of an interrupt system (biased slightly to PIC micros) which is true for any interrupt module and it is useful for understanding how to control and use interrupts.
The interruptvector is a location in memory that you program with the address of your interrupt service routine (ISR).