Vectored Interrupt Controller Port
ARM DDI 0301H Copyright © 2004-2009 ARM Limited. All rights reserved. 12-2
ID012310 Non-Confidential, Unrestricted Access
12.1 About the PL192 Vectored Interrupt Controller
An interrupt controller is a peripheral that is used to handle multiple interrupt sources. Features
usually found in an interrupt controller are:
• multiple interrupt request inputs, one for each interrupt source, and one interrupt request
output for the processor interrupt request input
• software can mask out particular interrupt requests
• prioritization of interrupt sources for interrupt nesting.
In a system with an interrupt controller having the above features, software is still required to:
• determine the interrupt source that is requesting service
• determine where the service routine for that interrupt source is loaded.
A Vectored Interrupt Controller (VIC) does both things in hardware. It supplies the starting
address, vector address, of the service routine corresponding to the highest priority requesting
interrupt source. The PL192 VIC is an Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA)
Advanced High-performance Bus (AHB) compliant, System-on-Chip (SoC) peripheral that is
developed, tested, and licensed by ARM Limited.
The processor VIC port and the Peripheral Interface enable you to connect a PL192 VIC to the
processor. See ARM PrimeCell Vectored Interrupt Controller (PL192) Technical Reference
Manual for more details.
To Next Page
Loading...
Need help?
General
