RTEMS 4.6.1 On-Line Library

Timing Specification Interrupt Latency

RTEMS Intel i386 Applications Supplement

9.2.2: Interrupt Latency

Interrupt latency is the delay between the CPU's receipt of an interrupt request and the execution of the first application-specific instruction in an interrupt service routine. Interrupts are a critical component of most real-time applications and it is critical that they be acted upon as quickly as possible.

Knowledge of the worst case interrupt latency of an executive aids the application designer in determining the maximum period of time between the generation of an interrupt and an interrupt handler responding to that interrupt. The interrupt latency of an system is the greater of the executive's and the applications's interrupt latency. If the application disables interrupts longer than the executive, then the application's interrupt latency is the system's worst case interrupt disable period.

The worst case interrupt latency for a real-time executive is based upon the following components:

the longest period of time interrupts are disabled by the executive,
the overhead required by the executive at the beginning of each ISR,
the time required for the CPU to vector the interrupt, and
for some microprocessors, the length of the longest instruction.

The first component is irrelevant if an interrupt occurs when interrupts are enabled, although it must be included in a worst case analysis. The third and fourth components are particular to a CPU implementation and are not dependent on the executive. The fourth component is ignored by this document because most applications use only a subset of a microprocessor's instruction set. Because of this the longest instruction actually executed is application dependent. The worst case interrupt latency of an executive is typically defined as the sum of components (1) and (2). The second component includes the time necessry for RTEMS to save registers and vector to the user-defined handler. RTEMS includes the third component, the time required for the CPU to vector the interrupt, because it is a required part of any interrupt.

Many executives report the maximum interrupt disable period as their interrupt latency and ignore the other components. This results in very low worst-case interrupt latency times which are not indicative of actual application performance. The definition used by RTEMS results in a higher interrupt latency being reported, but accurately reflects the longest delay between the CPU's receipt of an interrupt request and the execution of the first application-specific instruction in an interrupt service routine.

The actual interrupt latency times are reported in the Timing Data chapter of this supplement.

RTEMS Intel i386 Applications Supplement