Timing-Critical Sections

While most driver operations can be performed without synchronization and protection mechanisms beyond those provided by the locking primitives described in "Multithreading Additions to the State Structure", some devices require that a sequence of events happen in order without interruption. In conjunction with the locking primitives, the function ddi_enter_critical(9F) asks the system to guarantee, to the best of its ability, that the current thread will neither be pre-empted nor interrupted. This stays in effect until a closing call to ddi_exit_critical(9F) is made. See ddi_enter_critical(9F) for details.