The CPU usesIRQ to do what?

Question

The CPU usesIRQ to do what?

Answer 1

An IRQ in your CPU is an interrupt.

The best analogy I heard is you put the kettle on then go off and do something else, watching telly etc; but as soon as the kettle clicks off, your up to pour your cuppa.

Now substitute in CPU for yourself and the kettle for a program or piece of hardware. When the program or hardware generates an interrupt the CPU stop what it is doing and attends to the interrupt.

Answer 2

Abbreviation of interrupt request line, and pronounced I-R-Q. IRQs are hardware lines over which devices can send interrupt signals to the microprocessor. When you add a new device to a PC, you sometimes need to set its IRQ number by setting a DIP switch. This specifies which interrupt line the device may use. IRQ conflicts used to be a common problem when adding expansion boards, but the Plug-and-Play specification has removed this headache in most cases.