Patent ID: 8131901

Claim:
A method of processing interrupt signals using an apparatus for processing data providing virtualisation support for one or more virtual processing apparatuses, said method comprising the steps of: writing data characterising an interrupt signal to at least one of one or more virtual interfaces to respective virtual processing apparatuses in response to said interrupt signal received by said apparatus for processing data, said one or more virtual interfaces is provided in hardware separately from a memory of said apparatus for processing data and respectively including one or more list registers storing a list of uncompleted interrupts for an associated virtual processing apparatus; generating a virtual interrupt signal to trigger interrupt processing corresponding to interrupt processing by said associated virtual processing apparatus in response to said list of uncompleted interrupts within said list registers of said at least one virtual interface, and providing data characterising said virtual interrupt signal for reading from one or more interface registers included within said at least one virtual interface; using a first control program, executing as though upon said associated virtual processing apparatus and in response to said virtual interrupt signal, to read said data characterising said interrupt signal from said one or more interface registers; and performing interrupt processing, in response to said data characterising said interrupt signal read from said one or more interface registers, under control of said first control program and corresponding to interrupt processing by said associated virtual processing apparatus.