Device Driver and It's Purpose a specific type of 15 to a special kind of sofiware program or f fic hardware device that enables different ha Operating System. A device driver communica iter bus connected to the Device Driver in computing refer sofiware application that controls a speci devices to communicate with the computer's ‘with the computer hardware by computer subsystem or compul hardware. . Device Drivers are essential for a computer system to work properly because without a device driver the particular hardware fails to work accordingly. which means it fails in doing the function/action it was created to do. Most use the term Driver, but sane his SE Hardware Driver. which also refers to the Device Driver. Working of Device Driver: ystem’s instruction 10 aegess the device andl Device Drivers depend upon the Operating $ perform any particular action. After the action, they also show their reactions: by delivering, Sutput or status/message from the hardware device to the Operating system. For example, a printer driver tells the printer in which format to print afier getting instruction from OS, imilarly, A sound card driver is there due to which I's and 0's data of the MP3 file is sunverted to audio signals and you enjoy the music, Card reader. controller, modem. network card, sound card. printer, video card. USB devices. RAM. Speakers. ete nged Des ice Drivers to ‘operate. The following fi devices: gure illustrates the interaction between the user, OS, Device driver, and theSoftee ome Coma Con” . ‘Types of Device Driver: For almost every device associated with the computer system there exist a Device Driver for the particular hardware. But it can be broadly classified into two types ie 1. Kernel-mode Device Driver ~ This Kernel-mode device driver includes some generic hardware that loads with the operating system as part of the OS these are BIOS, motherboard, processor, and some other hardware that are part of kernel software. These include the minimum system requirement device drivers for each operating system. 2, User-mode Device Driver ~ Other than the devices which ar¢ brought by the kernel for working the system the user also brings some devices for use during the using of a system that devices need device drivers to function those drivers fall under User mode device driver. For example, the user needs any plug-and-play action that.comes under t Virtual Device Driver There are also virtual device drivers(VxD), which manage the virtual device. ‘Sometimes we use the same hardware virtually at that time virtual driver controls/manages the data flow from the different applications used by different users to the same hardware. Itis essential for a computer to have the required device drivers forall is parts to keep the system running efficiently. Many device drivers are provided by manufacturers. from the beginning and also we can later include any required device driver for our system. How does Device Driver work for OS?ey knivy ©) When you get a peripheral device such as a printer. scanner. keyboard or modem. the device comes together with a driver CD which needs to be installed before the device starty working, Xs soon we install the driver software into the computer, it detects and identifies the peripheral device, and we become able to control it. A device driver is a piece of software that allows your computer's operating system to communicate with a hardware device the driver is written for. Generally, a driver communicates with the device through the computer bus. which connects the dev ike with the computcy Device Drivers depend upon the Operating System's instruction to access the device and performing any particular action, After the action, they also show their reactions by delivering output or message from the hardware device to the Operating system. us system ‘pplication command ‘User level read?) {orconte Kernel level | | tuewet 5 i gonaney CSTE Device drivers work within the kernel layer of the operating system. Lhe kernel 1s the part of the operating system that directly interacts with the system's physi¢al structure, Instead of accessing a device directly; an operating system loads the device drivers and calls the specific functions in the driver software to execute specific tasks on the device. Each driver contains the device-specific codes required to carry out the actions on the device. Card reader, controller, modem, network card, sound card, printer. video card, USB devices, RAM, Speakers etc., need Device Drivers to operate. For example, a printer driver tells the printer which format to print after getting instructions from OS. Similarly, A sound card driver is, there because the 1's and 0's data of an MP3 file is converted to audio signals. and you enjoy the music. veBan Priw® cH APplizations of Device Drivers oo of the diversity of modem hardware and operating systems. drivers operate in many ifferent environments, Device drivers may interface with Printers. Video adapters. Network ards, Scund cards, Local buses of various sorts. Image scanners. Digital cameras. Digit terrestrial television tuners. IDA adapters. and Implementing support for ilicent file systems Ttalso interfaces with: « Low-bandwidthl/O buses of various sorts for pointing devices such as mice, Keyboards. ete. «Computer storagedevices such as hard disk, CD-ROM. and Hloppy lish buses (ATA: SATA, SCSI, SAS) © The radio-frequency communication transceiver adapters are used for short-distance and low-rate wireless communication in home automation. such ax Bluetooth Low Freres (BLE). Thread, ZigBee. and Z-Wave). for given hardware is often a key component Choosing and installing the correct device drivers of abstraction for device drivers include: of computer system configuration, Common levels 1, For hardware: Interfacing directly Writing to or reading from a device control register 0 BIOS) Using some higher-level interface (e.g, «Using another lower-level device driver (e.g. file system drivers using disk drivers) Jating work with hardware while doing something entirely different, © Simul 2. For software: «Allowing the operating system direct access to hardware esureey Implementing only primitives face for non-driver software (e.g. TWAIN) co Implementing an inter «Implementing a language. sometimes quite high-level (° PostScript)