The concept of an interrupt is something that has expanded in scope over the years.
The 80x86 family has only added to the confusion surrounding interrupts by introducing
the int (software interrupt) instruction. Indeed, different manufacturers have used terms
like exceptions, faults, aborts, traps, and interrupts to describe the phenomena this chapter
discusses. Unfortunately, there is no clear consensus as to the exact meaning of these
terms. Different authors adopt different terms to their own use. While it is tempting to
avoid the use of such misused terms altogether, for the purpose of discussion it would be
nice to have a set of well defined terms we can use in this chapter. Therefore, we will pick
three of the terms above, interrupts, traps, and exceptions, and define them. This chapter
attempts to use the most common meanings for these terms, but don’t be surprised to find
other texts using them in different contexts.