Linux Tutorial Series – 109.1 – Difference between signals and interrupts

The question you may have is: “What is the difference between signals and interrupts?”

The difference is as follows: Interrupts are the communication between the CPU (Central Processing Unit – your processor) and the operating system (the kernel), and signals are the communication between processes and the operating system (the kernel). (“Signals and interrupts a comparison,” n.d.)⁠

Let’s go into a bit more depth:

When an interrupt occurs (initiated by either hardware or software) it is actually managed by the CPU itself, which “interrupts” (pauses) the execution of the current process and tells the kernel to invoke the interrupt signal handler (which, to recap, is a program designed to handle interrupts). Signals, on the other hand, are used to communicate between processes. But, when the signal is traveling from the sending process to the receiving process, it is managed by the kernel, which invokes the action appropriate for the signal the process received.

I hope you gained some clarity on the difference between the two. This isn’t so that important and honestly I could have left out the part with the interrupts, but I just wanted for you to know about them since we were already talking about the operating system at such a low level. If you didn’t quite catch it, don’t worry – it won’t be that much of a hinderance.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

Signals and interrupts a comparison. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2020, from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13341870/signals-and-interrupts-a-comparison