Patent ID: 7565471

Claim:
A method for processing interrupts within a device capable of generating interrupt messages and communicating the interrupt messages to a host over a Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) enabled PCI-based bus, comprising: delivering an interrupt message to the PCI-based bus representing one or more attention conditions; performing an auto clear from within the device and without involvement of the host to clear down one or more attention indicators for the one or more attention conditions for which auto clear is enabled after confirming that the interrupt message was delivered; mapping each attention indicator to a map register that specifies an entry in an interrupt message table, said entry in the interrupt message table containing a particular interrupt message representing at least one attention indicator; and utilizing each map register to determine which interrupt message stored in the interrupt message table to deliver to the PCI-based bus when a particular attention indicator is asserted, wherein the auto clear is performed by confirming that an interrupt message was delivered, and responsive to the confirmation, utilizing the map registers to identify which attention indicators are represented by the interrupt message, and which of those attention indicators should be cleared down.