Objectives

• Understand how hardware, firmware and an operating

system are required to run applications
• Understand the role of the bootloader

• Describe the role and operation of interrupts including:

• How an interrupt is generated
• How it is handled using an interrupt service routine
• What happens as a result of the interrupts

• Be able to describe examples of software and

hardware interrupts
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Unit 6 Software

Starter
• ROM on a computer stores programs that cannot be
changed as they are stored on Read Only Memory
• Are these programs software or hardware?
• Discuss your thoughts with a partner
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Unit 6 Software

Firmware
• Hardware is a physical object
• The term is used for all physical components of a computer or
peripherals
• Software isn’t a physical object, so it is given the opposite
name (soft rather than hard)

• Firmware (both hard and soft) contains programs

that are stored permanently in hardware
• The BIOS stored on a computer
is stored on a flash ROM
• It can only be updated by flashing
the ROM
• Other peripherals may have their own firmware
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Unit 6 Software

Bootloader
• When you first turn on a computer it starts running
firmware stored in the ROM
• These instructions then load the
first instructions from the hard disk
telling the computer what tasks
to do
• The part of the hard disk that stores
these instructions is the boot sector
• Turning on a computer is
known as ‘booting’ after
“pulling yourself up by
your bootstraps”
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Unit 6 Software

Running applications
• Applications run on the computer’s Applications
operating system
• If they need to access hardware, they do
this via ‘calls’ to the operating system or
Operating system
device drivers

• The operating system itself runs on

top of the firmware Firmware
• The bootloader and other firmware runs
on the physical hardware itself

Hardware
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Unit 6 Software

Worksheet 3
• Complete Task 1 on Worksheet 3
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Unit 6 Software

Interrupts
• When you need to get the
attention of someone who is busy
you need to interrupt them
• In the same way, peripheral devices
also need to get the attention of the CPU
• They do this by sending an interrupt
which leads to the relevant
interrupt service routine (ISR) being run

• What happens to the current process

that is running on the processor?
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Unit 6 Software

Interrupts
• The current process will need to pause, but it will
need to be restarted later
• The value stored in the program counter (PC) is saved
in a location in RAM
• No more instructions of the following task are performed (they
will be later)
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Unit 6 Software

Interrupt Service Routine (ISR)

• Once the CPU has been interrupted, it needs to
process the interrupt
• It runs the interrupts program code known as an Interrupt
Service Routine (ISR)
• This is also known as an interrupt handler
• The ISR needs to execute as quickly as possible as it has
interrupted the CPU from the task it was working on
• For instance, if a key is pressed, the ISR may save the key
that was pressed. Later, a word-processor task can process it
further
Interrupt service
Interrupt routine (ISR) Processor returns to
generated previous task
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Unit 6 Software

Hardware interrupts
• Hardware devices send interrupt signals to the CPU
• The interrupts are sent via Interrupt Request Lines (IRQ)
• For instance, if a key on a keyboard is pressed, an interrupt
will be sent (actually an interrupt is sent when the key is
pressed and another is sent when it is released)
• When a mouse is moved, constant
interrupts are sent to the
computer so that it
is able to update
the location of
the pointer
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Unit 6 Software

Software interrupts
• Software interrupts are generated by programs that
are running
• For instance, if a program tries to divide by zero, a ‘division by
zero’ interrupt will need
to be handled
• In this case, an
exception is
handled by the OS
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Unit 6 Software

Software interrupts
• Software interrupts deal with faults such as:
• Page faults – this is when the data isn’t in RAM, but in
virtual memory and needs to be loaded back into RAM
• Segmentation faults – this is when the one program tries to
make an illegal memory location, such as the memory used
by another program

• When a fault occurs

an interrupt service
routine is called
which handles
the error
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Unit 6 Software

Worksheet 2
• Complete Task 2 on Worksheet 3
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Unit 6 Software

Plenary
• Take turns to explain to a partner each of the
following terms

Bootloader Firmware Interrupt

Interrupt service
Software interrupt Hardware interrupt
routine (ISR)
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Unit 6 Software

Plenary
• Bootloader – the first instructions a computer runs that tell it
where to find the boot sector on the hard drive. The bootloader
is stored in the ROM’s firmware
• Firmware – programs stored in ROM
• Interrupt – A signal sent to a processor causing it to pause the
current task and handle the interrupt
• Hardware interrupt – interrupts generated by hardware, such
as a key press or mouse movement
• Software interrupt – interrupts generated by software, such as
an attempted division by zero or an attempt to access a
memory location currently being used by another program
• Interrupt service routine – a short set of instructions that is
executed when an interrupt occurs – also known as an
interrupt handler
Interrupts
Unit 6 Software

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