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Interrupts :-
Interrupts are a response by the processor to a process/event that needs immediate attention from the software.
Interrupts alert the processor and servers a a request for the CPU to interrupt the currently executing program/code when permitted, in order so that the event can be processed within good time.
If the response is accepted from the processor, the processor will respond by suspending its current activities (saving its state), and thus executing a function called an interrupt handler to deal with the event.
This interrupt in activities and programs is only temporary, that is, unless the interrupt indicates a fatal error, otherwise the processor will resume all normal running actives after the interrupt handler finishes.
Interrupts are used by both hardware and software to indicate electric or physical state changes that require attention.
Interrupts have a heavy usage in computer multi-tasking, especially in real-time computing, moreover, these systems that utilise interrupts are said to be “interrupt-driven”.''
Advantages of Interrupts :-
Interrupts enable context switching. In a multi-processor computer, interrupts give the impression that the computer is multitasking.
In actuality, what happens is a lot of processes each with assigned priority levels are swapped in and out of memory to achieve the multitasking effect.
Interrupts are signals that tell the CPU when to stop it's current process to attend to a higher priority one.
One of the advantages of interrupts is that they can be used to break an infinite loop, which can create memory leaks or cause a program to be unresponsive.
Interrupts are important because they give the user better control over the computer.
Without interrupts, a user may have to wait for a given application to have a higher priority over the CPU to be ran. This ensures that the CPU will deal with the process immediately.