These functions are used to register and schedule software interrupt handlers. Software interrupt
handlers are attached to a software interrupt thread, just as hardware interrupt handlers are attached to
a hardware interrupt thread. Multiple handlers can be attached to the same thread. Software interrupt
handlers can be used to queue up less critical processing inside of hardware interrupt handlers so that
the work can be done at a later time. Software interrupt threads are different from other kernel threads
in that they are treated as an interrupt thread. This means that time spent executing these threads is
counted as interrupt time, and that they can be run via a lightweight context switch.
The swi_add() function is used to add a new software interrupt handler to a specified interrupt event.
The eventp argument is an optional pointer to a structintr_event pointer. If this argument points to an
existing event that holds a list of interrupt handlers, then this handler will be attached to that event.
Otherwise a new event will be created, and if eventp is not NULL, then the pointer at that address to
will be modified to point to the newly created event. The name argument is used to associate a name with
a specific handler. This name is appended to the name of the software interrupt thread that this handler
is attached to. The handler argument is the function that will be executed when the handler is scheduled
to run. The arg parameter will be passed in as the only parameter to handler when the function is
executed. The pri value specifies the priority of this interrupt handler relative to other software
interrupt handlers. If an interrupt event is created, then this value is used as the vector, and the
flags argument is used to specify the attributes of a handler such as INTR_MPSAFE. The cookiep argument
points to a void* cookie. This cookie will be set to a value that uniquely identifies this handler, and
is used to schedule the handler for execution later on.
The swi_remove() function is used to teardown an interrupt handler pointed to by the cookie argument. It
detaches the interrupt handler from the associated interrupt event and frees its memory.
The swi_sched() function is used to schedule an interrupt handler and its associated thread to run. The
cookie argument specifies which software interrupt handler should be scheduled to run. The flags
argument specifies how and when the handler should be run and is a mask of one or more of the following
flags:
SWI_DELAY Specifies that the kernel should mark the specified handler as needing to run, but the
kernel should not schedule the software interrupt thread to run. Instead, handler will be
executed the next time that the software interrupt thread runs after being scheduled by
another event. Attaching a handler to the clock software interrupt thread and using this
flag when scheduling a software interrupt handler can be used to implement the functionality
performed by setdelayed() in earlier versions of FreeBSD.
SWI_FROMNMI Specifies that swi_sched() is called from NMI context and should be careful about used KPIs.
On platforms allowing IPI sending from NMI context it immediately wakes clk_intr_event via
the IPI, otherwise it works just like SWI_DELAY.
The tty_intr_event and clk_intr_event variables contain pointers to the software interrupt handlers for
the tty and clock software interrupts, respectively. tty_intr_event is used to hang tty software
interrupt handlers off of the same thread. clk_intr_event is used to hang delayed handlers off of the
clock software interrupt thread so that the functionality of setdelayed() can be obtained in conjunction
with SWI_DELAY. The vm_ih handler cookie is used to schedule software interrupt threads to run for the
VM subsystem.