For most UNIX systems, Linux included, device drivers typically divide the work of processing interrupts into two parts or halves. The first part, the top half, is the familiar interrupt handler, ...

A computer cannot meet its requirements unless it communicates with its external devices. An interrupt is a communication gateway between the device and a processor. The allocation of an interrupt ...

Back in early November 2001, I started following a discussionbetween two factions of the Linux kernel community. The gist of thediscussion was over what was the best solution to the Linux ...

A real-time system must respect time constraints to ensure that its execution makes functional sense. It must be deterministic, ensuring the execution of system processes a priori. After analyzing the ...