Interrupts which are initiated by an instruction - Software

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• Nirja Shah   -Posted on 25 Nov 15
  Software interrupt
  - It occurs when an application software terminates or when it requests the operating system for some service.
  
  - It is same as the hardware interrupt, which occurs at the hardware level.
  
  - It only communicates with the kernel and indirectly interrupts the central processing unit.
  
  - They are associated with an interrupt handler, which is actually just a routine that is activated when an interrupt happens.
  
  - During this interrupt only one bit of information is communicated.
  
  - It is used to perform an input/output request.
  
  - This request, in turn, calls kernel routines that actually perform the service.
  
  - A software interrupt often emulates most of the features of a hardware interrupt.
  
  - It calls only a specific interrupt vector and saves the accumulators and registers.
  
  - A software interrupt can also make use of some of the hardware interrupt routines.
  
  - Similar in functionality to a subroutine call, it is used for different purposes in a device.
  
  - One notable example is when communicating with the disk controller for reading and writing data to and from a disk.

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