This article will hopefully clarify the differences between Physical Interrupts, Logical Interrupts and SYSINTR values.
Physical Interrupts
A Physical Interrupt, represents an actual Interrupt Line on the system. It' is important to note that a Physical Interrupt may have more than one actual source (for example Pio Channel A on the Atmel AT91 Processor has 32 possible sources for the Physical Interrupt due to it's 32 GPIO lines.)
Physical Interrupts may be Level-Based, Edge Based (Rising, Falling or Both) or even Level and Edge-Based depending on the platform. Generally, Phyiscal Interrupts cannot be both level and edge sensitive at the same time. Most platforms that support both must be configured for one or the other.
Logical Interrupts
A Logical Interrupt is used by a BSP to allow a driver to indivdually select an Interrupt Source even if it is shared with other devices.
Logical Interrupts allow for two interrupt sources that both share a Physical Interrupt line to be individually acccessed and separated at the Driver Level. This means that two Interrupt Sources may have Logical Interrupts 40 and 41 even though they are both actually Physical Interrupt 2.
It is the responsibilty of the person creating the BSP to create the actual Logical to Physical Interrupt mapping (part of the OAL Interrupt code.)
SYSINTR Values
SYSINTR Values are a mapping between values that drivers and system components use hook their ISTs up to actual Interrrupts. This mapping may be done dynamically or statically.
All SYSINTR values that are used by device drivers MUST use SYSINTR values that are are in the range of SYSINTR_FIRMWARE(16) to SYSINTR_MAXIMUM(72). If dynamic SYSINTRs are being used (highly recommended) then the driver will simply request a SYSINTR value from the OS for a Logical Interrupt that it already knows.
If a static SYSINTR value must be used, they may only exist between SYSINTR_FIRMWARE(16) + 16 and SYSINTR_MAXIMUM(72). Additionally, static SYSINTR values MUST be configured in the OAL of the BSP.
