High speed interrupt controller

Abstract

A high speed interrupt controller and interrupt discrimination scheme for a data communication system is provided, usable in a subsystem of a data communication system. The controller and its scheme may be used for expanding the number of interrupts to be efficiently received and discriminated by a processor having a limited number of interrupt input lines. The present invention can be used for optimizing the management of data within a shared bus with multiple masters, wherein a shared bus is connected to a plurality of bus masters and corresponding slaves and located between an external bus connected to a system processor, and an internal bus connected to an internal processor. The architecture utilizes the high speed interrupt controller device having a circuitry which has a plurality of interrupt lines and may have one output line and a control code, located in the device interrupt handler. The circuitry consists of a status register where an appropriate bit is set when an interrupt is received from an external interrupt source device, and an interrupt mask register which enables and disables certain interrupts. The control code is used for monitoring and controlling the circuitry and servicing the interrupts received by the processor.