"System interrupts" is not a process in the traditional sense, but is present to try to explain to the user that the computer is spending 1.5% of its CPU resources processing interrupt requests. Interrupts occur below the OS level, so they are not associated with any particular process.
Interrupts (IRQs) exist so that the hardware components of your system can tell the CPU things like "an error occurred", or "the data you requested is now available", or "this device would like to send data". Any time a device or piece of software needs to tell the CPU something about the task it's performing, or needs to instruct the CPU to do something, it raises an Interrupt, which the CPU receives and handles. When this happens, the CPU immediately stops what it is doing such that it processes the interrupt.
When viewed as a process, another related item are Deferred Procedure Calls (DPCs), which are OS functions called either directly or indirectly in response to a raised interrupt, in an asynchronous manner. By adding the System Interrupts and DPC processing together, you can generally estimate the amount of resources in use responding to IRQ handling.
There are good interrupts and bad ones. If you are spending a lot of time on interrupt processing, there is a good probability that at least one piece of hardware is failing. On the other hand, lots of hardware use IRQs for timing and other valuable purposes. For instance, the PCI bus uses IRQs to control what device is using the bus at any given instant, so that every device shares the bus efficiently.
At 1.5%, everything sounds normal to me.
1Thanks for your answer. What percentage of consumption should worry me? If I'd have a problem, how can I know what piece of Hardware is failing? – Daniel – 2014-12-15T06:24:47.240
really depends on the frequency of your CPU. I've had systems that just sat at 1.5, and others at less than 0.10 - 0.20. I'd really worry if you were using more than 10% on a modern machine. – Frank Thomas – 2014-12-15T06:28:18.607
My CPU runs at 2.5ghz. It's weird, sometimes it's on 1,5% (as I've said: Average) and for example it's now in 0,3%, but I've seen it in 5%. I will take the JakeGould's advice and I won't overthink this anymore... my PC is perfectly fine :) And now I know a little bit more about it. Thanks!! – Daniel – 2014-12-15T06:31:29.137
A question... How can I lower the CPU consumption of System Interrupts? – Daniel – 2014-12-15T14:02:53.470
2for the most part, you don't, unless there is a hardware problem that you diagnose and repair. you could avoid USB volumes for hard disks (instead installing the disk on a SATA port), as USB uses interrupts for sharing the bus, but other than that kind of thing, unless there is somthing wrong, you need the interrupts you are getting. They are not a user configurable thing, other than perhaps the Addresses each device uses, which is all that you could do 20 years ago. – Frank Thomas – 2014-12-15T14:40:07.763
2@Devilathor, Not much. The whole architecture of computers is based on interrupts and forcingly reducing their use by CPU (if even possible) would simply hang or slow down your whole system. The only safe way to reduce the number of interrupts is to reduce the number of hardware parts sending interrupts to the CPU. For that you can remove/unplug/turn off all non necessary hardware and see if that makes a difference. If some hardware are not removable, look for settings which would trigger less 'refresh' from them (stand-by mode if possible). – Hoki – 2014-12-15T14:44:27.177
I see. The funny thing is that this "process" has ever been there and I've never seen it, that's why I was worried. Thanks a lot! – Daniel – 2014-12-15T15:55:15.913
It's taking up most of my CPU. Is there any way to fix this? – kprovost7314 – 2015-04-05T03:07:24.027
then you likely have a serious problem with your drivers or your hardware. you can try reinstalling the OS, but if the behavior remains, then its time to start replacing parts. – Frank Thomas – 2015-04-05T05:39:03.730
@kprovost7314 If it's taking up most of your CPU, consider letting it stand idle for a while. It tends to happen after an unexpected shutdown or other non-standard situations. Takes a couple of minutes (more if it's a slow system I'd guess) but things will return to normal afterwards. Only if it doesn't go away you probably have failing parts. – Mast – 2019-07-21T07:53:06.387