Interrupts & Exceptions

Category

4 articles

• 01
  PIC & APIC

  Programming the legacy 8259 PIC and the modern APIC to route hardware interrupts.

• 02
  System Calls

  How user-mode programs request kernel services, from software interrupts to syscall/sysret.

• 03
  The IDT

  The interrupt descriptor table and how the CPU uses it to dispatch interrupts and exceptions.

• 04
  Timers

  The PIT, the Local APIC's own timer, the TSC, and HPET: four different ways a kernel can find out how much time has passed, and why most kernels end up using more than one.