Question

1. (5 points) 1.14 What is the purpose of interrupts? What are the differences between a trap and an interrupt? Can traps be generated intentionally by a user program? If so, for what purpose? 2. (5 points) 1.19 Rank the following storage systems from slowest to fastest: a. Hard-disk drives b. Registers c. Optical disk d. Main memory e. Nonvolatile memory f. Magnetic tapes g. Cache

Answer 1

Solution

1.14)

An interrupt is a hardware generated change of flow within the system.

An interrupt handler is summoned to deal with the cause of the interrupt; control is then returned to the interrupted context and instruction.

A trap is a software generated interrupt.

An interrupt can be used to signal he completion of an I/O(Input/Output) to obviate the need for device polling.

A trap can be used to call operating system routines or to catch arithmetic errors.

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1.15)

f. Magnetic Tapes-slowest
c. Optical Disk
a. Hard-disk Drives
e. Nonvolatile Memory
d. Main Memory
g. Cache
b. Registers-fastest

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all the best