Ast Reasearch, Inc.

Thomas W Masters

Barry Kennedy

An interrupt controller for use in a computer system capable of utilizing multiple processors provides a system for automatically distributing interrupts among processors installed in the system. More specifically, in the present invention, each processor has a corresponding interrupt controller. In one embodiment, one interrupt controller acts as a master to acknowledge interrupts at the system level and manage the distribution of interrupts, and any other interrupt controllers act as slave interrupt controllers. The master and slave interrupt controllers also provide an interface for a processor to interrupt another processor, to transfer an interrupt to another processor and to interrupt itself under local software control. Finally, the interrupt controllers provide different masking levels that allow a corresponding processor to temporarily mask interrupts assigned to the processor. The different masking levels also allow the interrupt controllers to accept two pending interrupts and then suppress interrupts to prevent losing any subsequent interrupts.

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Anaheim, CA, United States of America

Thomas W Masters