Final answer:
An interrupt is a signal that temporarily suspends the execution of a program. The processor saves the program state and jumps to an interrupt service routine (ISR) to handle the task. After the ISR completes, the processor resumes the program execution.
Step-by-step explanation:
An interrupt is a signal sent by a device, typically hardware, to the processor, which temporarily suspends the normal execution of the program. When an interrupt occurs, the processor saves the current state of the program, including the values of the registers and the program counter, onto the stack. It then jumps to the interrupt service routine (ISR) associated with the interrupt, which handles the task requested by the device that sent the interrupt. Once the ISR completes, the processor restores the saved state from the stack and resumes the execution of the program at the point it was interrupted.