Timing-Critical Sections

While most driver operations can be performed without mechanisms for synchronization and protection beyond those provided by the locking primitives, some devices require that a sequence of events occur 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.