Patent ID: 6920516
Filing Date: 2005-07-19
Classification: G06F,H03K

Abstract:
1. A method for avoiding starvation of interrupts of a computer system, the computer system having at least one processor for servicing the interrupts, a memory subsystem, one or more input/output (I/O) devices configured to issue interrupts and at least one interrupt controller, the method comprising the steps of: providing an interrupt queue register having a fixed number of entries for storing interrupts to be serviced by the at least one processor; posting interrupts generated by the one or more I/O devices to the interrupt queue register; determining whether the interrupt queue register is full and unable to store a given interrupt; and if the interrupt queue register is full, one of waiting a preset time and reposting the given interrupt to the interrupt queue register, and draining the contents of the interrupt queue register into the memory subsystem so that the interrupt queue register can store the given interrupt.