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Operating Systems: Virtualization, Concurrency & Persistence

Historical Notes

Understand the foundational history of interrupts and direct memory access as key concepts in operating systems. Discover how early computers managed communication between I/O devices and CPUs, highlighting the evolution and challenges of these essential mechanisms.

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Before ending, we include a brief historical note on the origin of some of the fundamental ideas discussed in this chapter. If you are interested in learning more, read Smotherman’s excellent summary“Interrupts” by Mark Smotherman. July ’08. Available: http://people.cs.clemson.edu/ ̃mark/interrupts.html. A treasure trove of information on the history of interrupts, DMA, and related early ideas in computing..

  • Interrupts are an ancient idea, existing on the earliest of ...