[SideburnsOfDoom]

Does a network card "poll" ? it's hardware activated by current flowing into it. Does the CPU poll the card, no, the CPU is interrupted by the network card, again by receiving an electrical signal.

If there's polling, it happens in a matter of a few CPU cycles.

[mike_hock]

At some point, this is splitting hairs. Single instructions are atomic wrt. interrupts, so surely there must be some sort of check every cycle whether an interrupt has arrived during that cycle.

The magnitude of the time slice or polling interval is immaterial as to whether it is to be considered "polling."