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2.6 Interrupts and Exceptions

The 80386 has two mechanisms for interrupting program execution:
  1. Exceptions are synchronous events that are the responses of the CPU to certain conditions detected during the execution of an instruction.
  2. Interrupts are asynchronous events typically triggered by external devices needing attention.
Interrupts and exceptions are alike in that both cause the processor to temporarily suspend its present program execution in order to execute a program of higher priority. The major distinction between these two kinds of interrupts is their origin. An exception is always reproducible by re-executing with the program and data that caused the exception, whereas an interrupt is generally independent of the currently executing program.

Application programmers are not normally concerned with servicing interrupts. More information on interrupts for systems programmers may be found in Chapter 9 . Certain exceptions , however, are of interest to applications programmers, and many operating systems give applications programs the opportunity to service these exceptions. However, the operating system itself defines the interface between the applications programs and the exception mechanism of the 80386.

Table 2-2 highlights the exceptions that may be of interest to applications programmers.

The instruction INT generates an interrupt whenever it is executed; the processor treats this interrupt as an exception. The effects of this interrupt (and the effects of all other exceptions) are determined by exception handler routines provided by the application program or as part of the systems software (provided by systems programmers). The INT instruction itself is discussed in Chapter 3. Refer to Chapter 9 for a more complete description of exceptions.
Table 2-2. 80386 Reserved Exceptions and Interrupts

Vector Number      Description

0                  Divide Error
1                  Debug Exceptions
2                  NMI Interrupt
3                  Breakpoint
4                  INTO Detected Overflow
5                  BOUND Range Exceeded
6                  Invalid Opcode
7                  Coprocessor Not Available
8                  Double Exception
9                  Coprocessor Segment Overrun
10                 Invalid Task State Segment
11                 Segment Not Present
12                 Stack Fault
13                 General Protection
14                 Page Fault
15                 (reserved)
16                 Coprocessor Error
17-32              (reserved)


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