interrupts are still the main methods. but modenr osses use LAPIC /APIC which is a more modern form of interrupt controller. it has a little more abilities and

interrupts are still the main methods. but modenr osses use LAPIC /APIC which is a more modern form of interrupt controller. it has a little more abilities and i think 1 local per cpu or core or w/e. basically interrupts are good, where 'polling' is the legacy method (very legacy :D) of querying hardware untill it's read. via interupts hardware can let the OS know, so it's not wasting cycles waiting for hardware.