Nios® II Software Developer Handbook

ID 683525
Date 8/28/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

9.3.1.8. Use Nested Hardware Interrupts

By default, the HAL disables interrupts when it dispatches an ISR. This means that only one ISR can execute at any time, and ISRs are executed on a first-come first-served basis. This reduces the system overhead associated with interrupt processing, and simplifies ISR development. The ISR does not need to be reentrant. ISRs can use and modify any global or static data structures or hardware registers that are not shared with application code.

However, first-come first-served execution means that the HAL hardware interrupt priorities only have an effect if two IRQs are active at the same time. A low-priority interrupt occurring before a higher-priority interrupt can prevent the higher-priority ISR from executing. This is a form of priority inversion, and it can have a significant impact on ISR performance in systems that generate frequent interrupts.

A software system can achieve full hardware interrupt prioritization by using nested ISRs. With nested ISRs, higher-priority interrupts are allowed to interrupt lower-priority ISRs.

This technique can improve the response time for higher-priority interrupts.

Note: Nested ISRs increase the processing time for lower-priority hardware interrupts.

If your ISR is very short, it might not be worth the overhead to enable nested hardware interrupts. Enabling nested interrupts for a short ISR can actually increase the response time for higher-priority interrupts.

Note: If you use a separate exception stack with the IIC, you cannot nest hardware interrupts.

For more information about separate exception stacks, refer to “Use a Separate Exception Stack”.