Figure: Linux Interrupt Handling Data Structures
One of the principal tasks of Linux's interrupt handling subsystem is to
route the interrupts to the right pieces of interrupt handling code.
This code must understand the interrupt topology of the system.
If, for example, the floppy controller interrupts on pin 6
of the interrupt controller then it must recognize the interrupt as
from the floppy and route it to the floppy device driver's interrupt handling code.
Linux uses a set of pointers to data structures
containing the addresses of the routines that handle the system's interrupts.
These routines belong to the device drivers for the devices in the system
and it the responsibility of each device driver to request the interrupt that it wants
when the driver is initialized.
Figure 
shows that
irq_action is a vector of pointers to the irqaction data
structure.
Each irqaction data structure contains information about the handler
for this interrupt, including the address of the interrupt handling routine.
As the number of interrupts and how they are handled varies between architectures and, sometimes, between
systems, the Linux interrupt handling code is architecture specific.
This means that the size of the irq_action vector varies depending on the number of interrupt
sources that there are.
When the interrupt happens, Linux must first determine its source by reading the interrupt status register of the system's programmable interrupt controllers. It then translates that source into an offset into the irq_action vector. So, for example, an interrupt on pin 6 of the interrupt controller from the floppy controller would be translated into the seventh pointer in the vector of interrupt handlers. If there is not an interrupt handler for the interrupt that occurred then the Linux kernel will log an error, otherwise it will call into the interrupt handling routines for all of the irqaction data structures for this interrupt source.
When the device driver's interrupt handling routine is called by the Linux kernel it
must efficiently work out why it was interrupted and respond.
To find the cause of the interrupt the device driver would read the status register of
the device that interrupted.
The device may be reporting an error or that a requested operation has completed.
For example the floppy controller may be reporting that it has completed the positioning
of the floppy's read head over the correct sector on the floppy disk.
Once the reason for the interrupt has been determined, the device driver may need to
do more work.
If it does, the Linux kernel has mechanisms which allow it to
postpone that work until later.
This avoids the CPU spending too much time in interrupt mode.
See the Device Driver chapter (Chapter ) for more details.