Interrupt handlers

The mechanism for notifying the operating system that an external event has taken place is to interrupt the currently running thread and transfer control to an interrupt handler.

Before the interrupt handler can run, enough of the hardware state must be saved to ensure that the system can restore the context of the thread after interrupt handling is complete. Newly invoked interrupt handlers experience all of the delays of moving up the hardware hierarchy (except page faults). Unless the interrupt handler was run very recently (or the intervening programs were very economical), it is unlikely that any of its code or data remains in the TLBs or the caches.

When the interrupted thread is dispatched again, its execution context (such as register contents) is logically restored, so that it functions correctly. However, the contents of the TLBs and caches must be reconstructed on the basis of the program's subsequent demands. Thus, both the interrupt handler and the interrupted thread can experience significant cache-miss and TLB-miss delays as a result of the interrupt.