Why is intr taking up so much cpu?

[Rui Paulo]

On 17 Jul 2010, at 08:17, Doug Barton wrote:

> This is happening after I open a flash video in firefox and watch it for 
>> 15 minutes:
> 
> root   20 -80    -     0K   160K WAIT    0   3:38 14.08% intr
> 
> After this happens, my system goes into a death spiral and I have to shut it down.
> 
> vmstat -i
> interrupt                          total       rate
> irq1: atkbd0                       10384          0
> irq9: acpi0                            5          0
> irq14: ata0                       153410          7
> irq15: ata1                           58          0
> irq17: wpi0                       534038         27
> irq20: hpet0 uhci0+              2496833        129
> irq22: uhci2                       66485          3
> cpu0:timer                      19238037        999
> irq256: hdac0                     189713          9
> cpu1:timer                      19236431        999
> Total                           41925394       2178
> 
> 
> Any suggestions?  current (r210135), i386 smp. Dell C2D laptop.

What's vmstat -i before the event happens?

Regards,
--
Rui Paulo