Software Interrupts

The Solaris 9 DDI/DKI supports software interrupts, also known as soft interrupts. Soft interrupts are initiated by software, rather than by a hardware device. Handlers for these interrupts must also be added to and removed from the system. Soft interrupt handlers run in interrupt context and therefore can be used to do many of the tasks that belong to an interrupt handler.

Hardware interrupt handlers are supposed to perform their tasks quickly, since they may suspend other system activity while running. This is particularly true for high-level interrupt handlers, which operate at priority levels greater than that of the system scheduler. High-level interrupt handlers mask the operations of all lower-priority interrupts—including those of the system clock. Consequently, the interrupt handler must avoid involving itself in an activity (such as acquiring a mutex) that might cause it to sleep.

If the handler sleeps, then the system may hang because the clock is masked and incapable of scheduling the sleeping thread. For this reason, high-level interrupt handlers normally perform a minimum amount of work at high-priority levels and delegate remaining tasks to software interrupts, which run below the priority level of the high-level interrupt handler. Because software interrupt handlers run below the priority level of the system scheduler, they can do the work that the high-level interrupt handler was incapable of doing.