Hardware Sensor Interrupt Isolation for Error-Resilient IRQ Handling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems face challenges in efficiently handling interrupts for multiple sensors, particularly in vehicles, leading to potential safety risks due to interference and reduced performance as the number of sensors increases, especially when software-based interrupt handlers are unable to respond quickly to incoming data.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a hardware-based interrupt handler that offloads processing from general-purpose processors, allowing each sensor to have a dedicated context buffer, enabling error handling for faulty sensors without disrupting the operation of functioning ones, thus providing scalable and interference-free interrupt management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If software-based interrupt handlers are used for multiple sensors, then system complexity is reduced, but response speed and reliability deteriorate as the number of sensors increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the interrupt handling system into multiple independent hardware interrupt handlers, with each handler dedicated to processing interrupts from a specific sensor. This segmentation allows parallel processing of sensor interrupts without software coordination overhead, thereby maintaining low complexity while achieving high response speed and reliability even as the number of sensors increases.
2Device complexity
If a single shared interrupt handler processes multiple sensors, then device complexity is minimized, but reliability deteriorates due to interference between sensors when errors occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements separate hardware interrupt handlers for each sensor, creating isolated processing channels. When an error occurs in one sensor, its dedicated handler can handle the error without affecting other sensors' processing, thereby maintaining high reliability while keeping the overall structure simple through standardized handler design.
Solution Approach 2:
Each hardware interrupt handler is optimized specifically for its associated sensor's characteristics and requirements. This local optimization allows each handler to process its sensor's data with appropriate error handling strategies, ensuring that errors are contained locally and do not propagate to other sensor processing channels, thus improving overall system reliability.
3Reliability
If hardware-based interrupt handlers with dedicated context buffers are implemented for each sensor, then response speed and reliability are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a universal hardware interrupt handler design that can be instantiated for each sensor with the same architectural blueprint. Each handler follows an identical structure with dedicated context buffers, error handling logic, and processing pathways. This universality allows the system to achieve high reliability through isolation while controlling complexity through design standardization and reuse across multiple sensors.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are described for interrupt handling. A device can obtain, at a first context buffer associated with a first interrupt handler, first processing configuration data associated with a first sensor; obtain, at a second context buffer associated with a second interrupt handler, second processing configuration data associated with a second sensor; obtain, at the first interrupt handler, an error indication associated with the first sensor; perform, by the first interrupt handler, based on the error indication, an error handling operation (where the error handling operation comprises flushing the first context buffer and/or invalidating the first processing configuration data in the first context buffer); obtain, at the second interrupt handler, during a time window interval between obtaining the error indication and a completion time of the error handling operation, from the second sensor, an interrupt request (IRQ); and output, based on the IRQ, the second processing configuration data to a processor.