Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

3.4. Multiprocessors

The discussion so far has considered only a single processor. We should consider how exceptions and interrupts are managed on multiprocessors.

When a program runs on a processor, any exceptions it causes are signalled to that processor. These include errors, system calls and page faults, all of which are synchronous.

The handling of asynchronous exceptions, such as those caused by interrupts from a peripheral device, will depend on the details of the multiprocessor configuration. An installation may include dedicated devices, such as user terminals, shared devices such as disks, and possibly system management devices, such as an operator console. One option is that each hardware device is allocated to a single processor, ...