Background
Because interrupt processing is typically a non-preemptible task in time-sharing operating systems, an interrupt storm will cause low perceived system responsiveness, or even appear to freeze the system completely. This state is commonly known as live lock. In such a state, the system is spending so much time processing interrupts that it is not completing any other work. Therefore, it does not appear to be processing anything at all, because of a lack of output to the user, the network, or otherwise. An interrupt storm is sometimes mistaken for thrashing, since they both have similar symptoms, but different causes.
An interrupt storm can have many different causes, including misconfigured or faulty hardware devices, faulty device drivers, or flaws in the operating system. Most modern hardware implements methods for reducing or eliminating the possibility of an interrupt storm. For example, many Ethernet controllers implement interrupt "rate limiting", which causes the controller to wait a programmable minimum amount of time between each interrupt it generates.
The most common interrupt storm is a faulty driver under an APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) where a device "behind" another signals an interrupt to the APIC. The OS then asks each driver on that interrupt if it was from its hardware. Faulty drivers may always claim "yes", but then proceed no further as the hardware attached actually did not interrupt. The device which originally interrupted did not get its interrupt serviced, so interrupts again and the cycle begins anew. Many operating systems, e.g. Linux, lock dead under an interrupt storm; others have mechanisms to avoid it. This was (and remains) a problem on the SoundBlaster Live! series of sound cards on some motherboards; only a kernel debugger can break the storm by unloading the faulty driver.
Many OSes implement a polling mode that disables interrupts for devices which generate too many interrupts. In this mode, the OS periodically queries the hardware for pending tasks. As the number of interrupts increase and the efficiency of an interrupt mode diminishes, an OS may change the interrupting device from an interrupt mode to a polling mode. Likewise, as the polling mode becomes less efficient than the interrupt mode, the OS will switch the device back to the interrupt mode. The implementation of interrupt rate limiting in hardware almost negates the need for such polling modes.
Read more about this topic: Interrupt Storm
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