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timer interrupt

An interrupt from a clock built into each core, which the operating system sets to go off regularly so it gets control back from any running program.

A timer interrupt is raised by a per-core timer (x86-64 local APIC timer or TSC deadline, ARM generic timer, RISC-V stimecmp) programmed by the kernel; it drives time slicing, timeouts and timekeeping.

Examples

  • A timer set to 1,000 Hz interrupts the running program every 1 ms.

See also

preemption interrupt controller
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