On Wednesday 26 December 2001 13:20, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote:

Hi:

What is apic??

Thanks!

Raul

Found this... posted 27 May 1999 by Phil Wilshire http://www.rtlinux.org/mailing_list/rtl.w5archive/9905/msg00173.html It describes it pretty well..... -------------------------------------------------------- Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC), referred to in the following sections as the local APIC. The local APIC performs two main functions for the processor It processes local external interrupts that the processor receives at its interrupt pins and local internal interrupts that software generates. In multiple processor systems, it communicates with an external I/O APIC chip. The external I/O APIC receives external interrupt events from the system and interprocessor interrupts from the processors on the system bus and distributes them to the processors on the system bus. The I/O APIC is part of Intels system chip set. The local APIC controls the dispatching of interrupts (to its associated processor) that it receives either locally or from the I/O APIC. It provides facilities for queuing, nesting and masking of interrupts. It handles the interrupt delivery protocol with its local processor and accesses to APIC registers, and also manages interprocessor interrupts and remote APIC register reads. A timer on the local APIC allows local generation of interrupts, and local interrupt pins permit local reception of processor-specific interrupts. The local APIC can be disabled (in hardware or software) and used in conjunction with a standard 8259A-style interrupt controller. I'd go to http://developer.intel.com/design/PentiumII/manuals/ for some good .pdf documents which detail this stuff. ------------------------------------- Later C. -- This is Linux country. If you listen carefully, you can hear Windows reboot...