Patent ID: 7281075

Claim:
A method for selecting one of a plurality of virtual processors for presentation of a virtual interrupt, comprising: determining if any of the virtual processors is currently executing; if so, determining whether any executing virtual processor does not have a source of the virtual interrupt masked; if so, presenting the virtual interrupt to a virtual processor determined to be currently executing and to not have the virtual interrupt source masked; if none of the virtual processors is both currently executing and does not have a source of the virtual interrupt masked: determining if any of the virtual processors is currently executing and, if so, presenting the virtual interrupt to a virtual processor determined to be currently executing; if none of the virtual processors is currently executing: determining if any of the virtual processors does not have the source of the virtual interrupt masked and, if so, presenting the virtual interrupt to a virtual processor determined to not have the source of the virtual interrupt masked; and presenting the virtual interrupt to a virtual processor that is not currently executing and that has the source of the virtual interrupt masked only if none of the virtual processors is currently executing and each of the virtual processors have the source of the interrupt masked.