Interrupts per second

[vicw]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me or show me a website as to what is 'interrupts per second'.

Thank you,
Vic

 

[MMAshwin]

Hi

I had a look as the system monitor and "interrupts a second" is not listed but I found it in performance monitor on an NT machine. If you select it and press the explain button you get the following:-

"Interrupts/sec is the number of device interrupts the processor is experiencing. A device interrupts the processor when it has completed a task or when it otherwise requires attention. Normal thread execution is suspended during interrupts. An interrupt may cause the processor to switch to another, higher priority thread. Clock interrupts are frequent and periodic and create a background of interrupt activity."

However I suspect that any program that could count them would interfere with the very results it was trying to measure.("Shades of Schrodingers cat here&quot.

Hope this helps.

 

[nbucska]

The PC is periodically ( I think about every 18 millisec )
interrupted for the real time clock. This can be disabled
without any difficulty.

No, Laffalot, you can easily measure it with a simple program, using an other counter.

<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[MMAshwin]

Hi nbucska
I disagree with your No,

That would be true if the computer program you mentioned used no processor time, no RAM and or virtual memory, no video display etc.

Depending on the priority of the interrupt depends on when they get serviced. What if you program is using a higher priority device?. It is for example possible to have a rogue peripheral which continually interupts and hangs up the PC. I suspect it would be the same with a program using a device. So I still say a program used to measure the performance of a PC will affect the results. However this may be factored into the results.

 

[nbucska]

Hi laffalot:
let's take this offline.
<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>