Interrupt latency

Imagine you're playing with your toys and your mom asks you to come eat dinner. You stop playing with your toys and start walking to the kitchen. That time it takes for you to stop playing with your toys and start walking to the kitchen is like "interrupt latency".

When a computer is running programs, it might need to stop what it's doing and do something else, like when you stop playing with your toys and go eat dinner. This is called an "interrupt". The time it takes for the computer to stop what it's doing and start doing the new thing is the "interrupt latency".

Just like how it takes you a little bit of time to stop playing and start walking to the kitchen, the computer might also take a little bit of time to stop running one program and start running a different program. The interrupt latency is the time delay between when the computer gets the signal to switch to something else and when it actually starts doing that thing.

This can be important for some things that need to happen quickly, like when a computer is running a program that controls a machine. If there's too much interrupt latency, the machine might not respond quickly enough and that could be dangerous.