Interrupt Handlers in Java

Abstract

An important part of implementing device drivers is to control the interrupt facilities of the hardware platform and to program interrupt handlers. Current methods for handling interrupts in Java use a server thread waiting for the VM to signal an interrupt occurrence. It means that the interrupt is handled at a later time, which has some disadvantages. We present constructs that allow interrupts to be handled directly and not at a later point decided by a scheduler. A desirable feature of our approach is that we do not require a native middelware layer but can handle interrupts entirely with Java code. We have implemented our approach using an interpreter and a Java processor, and give an example demonstrating its use.