Asynchronous Signals

Interrupts (such as SIGINT and SIGIO) are asynchronous with any thread and result from some action outside the process. They might be signals sent explicitly by other threads, or they might represent external actions such as a user typing Control-c. Dealing with asynchronous signals is more complicated than dealing with synchronous signals.

An interrupt can be handled by any thread whose signal mask allows it. When more than one thread is able to receive the interrupt, only one is chosen.

When multiple occurrences of the same signal are sent to a process, then each occurrence can be handled by a separate thread, as long as threads are available that do not have it masked. When all threads have the signal masked, then the signal is marked pending and the first thread to unmask the signal handles it.