Distinguish between maskable and non maskable interrupts?
Answers
hello friend, your answer is here:
A maskable interrupt is one that you can ignore by setting (or clearing) a bit in an interrupt control register. Typically your processor might allow multiple interrupt sources, but your design only requires some of them. You would mask off the unused interrupts so that noise on those lines doesn't cause problems. You might also want to mask off interrupt sources that are real, but of lower priority at particular points of your process.
Eg: RST6.5,RST7.5,RST5.5 OF 8085 are maskable Interrupts.
Non-maskable interrupts do not get gated by the interrupt control register -- they ALWAYS interrupt, no matter what state your processor is in. Typically these are used for CRITICIAL or FATAL conditions, or for system reset functions. If your system gets stuck in an infinite loop with interrupts disabled, the NMI is your last hope to reset the system.