How are interrupts handled by dual processor machines?

Posted by jeffD on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by jeffD
Published on 2009-03-01T04:05:15Z Indexed on 2010/05/10 8:34 UTC
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I have an idea of how interrupts are handled by a dual core CPU. I was wondering about how interrupt handling is implemented on a board with more than one physical processor.

Is any of the interrupt responsibility determined by the physical board's configuration? Each processor must be able to handle some types of interrupts, like disk I/O. Unless there is some circuitry to manage and dispatch interrupts to the appropriate processor? My guess is that the scheme must be processor neutral, so that any processor and core can run the interrupt handler.

If a core is waiting on a disk read, will that core be the one to run the interrupt handler when the disk is ready?

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