Question
A computer handles several interrupt sources of which the following are relevant for this question.
- Interrupt from CPU temperature sensor (raises interrupt if CPU temperature is too high)
- Interrupt from Mouse (raises interrupt if the mouse is moved or a button is pressed)
- Interrupt from Keyboard (raises interrupt when a key is pressed or released)
- Interrupt from Hard Disk (raises interrupt when a disk read is completed)
Which one of these will be handled at the HIGHEST priority?
Official answer and solution
- Official answer
- D
- From
- Official GATE 2011 answer key
Solution
Assess the severity and urgency of each interrupt source in a computer system.
- Hardware interrupts are prioritized based on urgency and the potential consequence of service delays.
- Peripheral I/O devices (such as a mouse, keyboard, or hard disk controller) operate at moderate priorities because delayed service results only in minor latency or buffered data queues.
- A CPU temperature sensor interrupt indicates catastrophic thermal overheating that threatens physical destruction of the silicon processor core. It is configured as a high-priority Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) that immediately preempts all normal instruction execution and device interrupts to throttle or shut down the processor safely.
Final answer
D
The answer is the one in the official GATE answer key. The solution is this site's own explanation.
Source
- Paper
- GATE 2011 Computer Science and Information Technology (CS)
- Question
- 11 of 65, printed as CS Q.11
- Section
- Computer Science and Information Technology
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