Can an interupt be processed by software, without hardware support? [closed]

Question

Can an interrupt be processed by software without the need for hardware suppport? Assume an x86 architecture.

Interrupts are generated by hardware. This question doesnt make much sense. Are you wanting software to generate an interrupt?
... yeah... I may be mistaken here, but I believe the point of an interrupt is to flag the CPU so that it hands control of something to some specific piece of code. Interrupts are always processed by software (the handling code called by the CPU), but without hardware (CPU) support, you can't have interrupts.
What's the connection with Unix? You might want to ask on Stack Overflow, a Q&A site about programming. But you'll need to explain what you mean by “need for hardware support”: is there some concrete programming problem you're facing? Are you studying chip design?
@Patrick, that is true; but many architectures have instructions that force an interrupt (the famous int 0x80 that used to invoke a system call in Linux is a case in point), also doing several stupid things wins you an interrupt (1 / 0, sqrt(-1.0) are examples).

Karlson · Answer 1 · 2012-03-24 04:47:30Z

I think you are mixing what you are trying to ask.

There are hardware interrupts generated by events on various devices.

About DOS Interrupt 21h which was used to handle certain Software Only functions like program exit.

closed as off topic by Gilles, Stéphane Gimenez, Renan, Ulrich Dangel, jw013 Aug 31 '12 at 20:15