Embedded Systems Design, 2nd Edition

Interrupts and exceptions 189

6 Interrupts and exceptions

Interrupts are probably the most important aspect of any

embedded system design and potentially can be responsible for

many problems when debugging a system. Although they are

simple in concept, there are many pitfalls that the unwary can fall

into. This chapter goes through the principles behind interrupts,

the different mechanisms that are used with various processor

architectures and provides a set of do’s and don’ts to help guide

the designer.

What is an interrupt?

We all experience interrupts at some point during our lives

and find that they either pose no problem at all or they can very

quickly ...