HP OpenVMS Systems

Interrupt Priority Levels? (IPLs)

» close window

The Question is:

 
Can you please explain the various IPL levels and what type functions occur at
 each level.
 

The Answer is :

  IPL stands for Interrupt Priority Level. This is one of several
  synchronization mechanisms used by the operating system to coordinate
  and control the use of various physical and logical resources. Normal
  user code always runs at IPL 0.
 
  Often, IPLs are described in terms what operations can NOT occur at a
  particular level, rather than what operations CAN be performed. This is
  because changing IPL is usually done to BLOCK certain operations.
 
  Think of IPLs as being a series of work queues. Different tasks get
  scheduled on different queues. When looking for something to do, the system
  will take the first entry off the highest numbered queue. Only after all
  entries on a queue have been completed will a lower numbered queue be
  addressed. Some entries are posted by hardware events, others may be posted
  by software events. When an event gets posted to a higher queue than the
  current IPL level of the current thread, the thread is interrupted to service
  the higher priority event. Software threads can change their IPL up or down
  to block events that will be scheduled on lower IPL queues There are some
  fairly complex rules that dictate exactly when and how IPL can be changed,
  especially downwards.
 
  For complete details you would need to read the Internals and Data Structures
  Manual, but here is a very brief and highly simplified description of some
  of the more popular IPL levels.
 
 
    IPL 31 IPL$_POWER - blocks ALL interrupts used to initialise the system
	or to crash the system
 
    IPL 30 powerfail used to notify the system that power has failed
 
    IPL 24 or 22 (varies depending on hardware) hardware clock interrupt
 
    DEVICE IPLs - specific to the device
 
    FORK IPLs - see IDSM, used to allow device drivers to lower IPL in
	a consistent manner
 
    IPL 8 IPL$_SYNCH - used to control access to various system wide
	data structures, such as the scheduler data base, lock manager and
	cluster communications.
 
    IPL 7 - Software timer interrupt
 
    IPL 6 IPL$_QUEUEAST - used to deliver ASTs
 
    IPL 4 - used for I/O post processing
 
    IPL 3 - the resheduling interrupt
 
    IPL 2 - used to block delivery of all ASTs at all modes, as a
	consequence it also blocks process deletion and suspension
 
  Note that the IPL mechanism can only effectively synchronise multiple
  threads of execution on a SINGLE CPU. For that reason, most IPL levels
  also have an associated spinlock to allow synchronisation with other
  CPUs in an SMP environment.

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 11-APR-2000 )
     
» close window