Suppose that in responding to interrupts from I/O deviceA the processor consumes 1000 cycles to perform the context switch required to transfer control to the interrupt handler. The interrupt handler takes an additional 10,000 cycles to service the device request. Once the interrupt processing is complete, another 1000 cycles are required to perform the context switch required to return from the interrupt handler and resume the program that was running. The processor's cycle time is 0.5 nano-seconds.

a) What is the maximum rate at which DeviceA can generate requests without causing the system to loose data?

b) Suppose that a program running on the same processor polls some other device (DeviceB) for requests. If each polling operation takes 150 nano-seconds, what is the maximum time that could be taken to service the device if the loss of data is to be avoided and the device generates 2 million requests per second?