In a computer, an interrupt request (or IRQ) is a hardware signal sent to the processor that temporarily stops a running program and allows a special program, an interrupt handler, to run instead. Hardware interrupts are used to handle events such as receiving data from a modem or network card, key presses, or mouse movements.
Interrupt lines are often identified by an index with the format of IRQ followed by a number. For example, on the Intel 8259 family of programmable interrupt controllers (PICs) there are eight interrupt inputs commonly referred to as IRQ0 through IRQ7. In x86 based computer systems that use two of these PICs, the combined set of lines are referred to as IRQ0 through IRQ15. Technically these lines are named IR0 through IR7, and the lines on the ISA bus to which they were historically attached are named IRQ0 through IRQ15 (although historically as the number of hardware devices increased, the total possible number of interrupts was increased by means of cascading requests, by making one of the IRQ numbers cascade to another set or sets of numbered IRQs, handled by one or more...
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