Patent ID: 9575911
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. An interrupt controller for controlling processing of interrupt requests by a plurality of processing units, the processing units having at least two modes, said mode comprising an active mode and an inactive mode, the interrupt controller comprising: a controller input for receiving an interrupt request; an interrupt router coupled to the controller input arranged to route a received interrupt request, to a selected processing unit out of the plurality of processing units, in response to which the selected processing unit initiates execution of an interrupt service routine, comprising a sequence of operations, the interrupt router comprising a router input for receiving a routing change signal, the interrupt router arranged to route the execution of the interrupt service routine from the selected processing unit to another preselected processing unit of the plurality of processing units in response to receiving the routing change signal; a monitoring unit comprising a monitoring input coupled to the plurality of the processing units to monitor the mode of the processing units, and a monitoring output coupled to the router input arranged to provide the routing change signal when the monitoring unit determines that the selected processing unit has changed to said inactive mode subsequent to initiation of execution of the interrupt service routine while the preselected one of the plurality of the processing units is in said active mode, and the interrupt request associated with the interrupt service routine has a priority level above a predetermined priority threshold.