Inside ivtHandleInterrupt , there was a macro used to save the CPU state. It was written five years ago by a programmer who had long since retired. The macro assumed the stack was always aligned on an 8-byte boundary. But when the Wi-Fi interrupt barged in, it pushed a return address that messed up that alignment.
Context save/restore
A peripheral raises an interrupt request (IRQ) line to the interrupt controller (e.g., NVIC on ARM Cortex-M, GIC on ARM Cortex-A, or PIC on x86). ivthandleinterrupt
When a device (like a graphics card, network adapter, or external Thunderbolt drive) attempts to communicate with your system memory, it uses Direct Memory Access (DMA). In modern computers, this access is regulated by the IOMMU (known as Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi).
The keyword IVTHandleInterrupt often refers to a user-defined function or a specialized handler designed to handle an interrupt vector table (IVT) entry. Inside ivtHandleInterrupt , there was a macro used
Modern operating systems utilize alongside IOMMU hardware (such as Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi) to sand-box hardware devices. Peripheral components like NVMe SSDs, PCIe network adapters, and external Thunderbolt devices require rapid memory access through Direct Memory Access (DMA).
"The stack alignment," Elias breathed. "You're misaligned by a word." But when the Wi-Fi interrupt barged in, it
In a multiprocessor system, multiple CPUs need to communicate with each other and share resources. The APIC is responsible for managing interrupts between CPUs, and ivthandlerinterrupt is the interrupt handler that services these interrupts.
EFI_IVT_HANDLE_INTERRUPT_PROTOCOL *IvtHandleInterrupt; EFI_STATUS Status;
: Outdated firmware can cause the IOMMU to misidentify legitimate hardware requests as violations. Toggle Memory Access Protection :