Why is the device driver so special?

[avssunil]

Why is the device driver so special???? What makes it so important???Why the device driver is not integrated in the OS???

 

[cristi7521]

Re: Device Driver

Every i2c, spi or other IC which is connected to microcontroller have specific instruction for programming. Device driver is not integrated in os or compiler.
If you want to use an lcd or eeprom memory you must have driver specific for that device, or you will not be able to communicate with that device.

Cristi

 

[asprakash]

Re: Device Driver

And The users cant acces the device directly. So the user need one hardware interface program called "Device driver" to access the devices. The DD is little bit complex other than the user program. coz, the DD going to interact with the H/W. So the DD programmer should know somthg abt that H/W other than the programming skills.

 

[kotta]

Re: Device Driver

Hi,

In the context of device driver!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Could you please xplain i which languages drivers will be designed@@@@

And if the answer is using c,c++,what factor makes the c language to interact with the hardware directly!!!!!!!!!!!

Also could you please let me know for the following

"C and verilog are there,where as C is serial execution,
Verilog is concurent execution,"

what factors makes such difference??????when dealing with the compilers.Ofcourse both are compilers only written in some language!!!!!!!!

regards
sreedhar

 

[agent_009]

Re: Device Driver

The fact that C language is a structured language (not Object Oriented), it makes it easier to access and program hardware. It resembles assembly language which is even more closer to hardware.

As for comparison b/w Verilog and C , verilog has concurrent execution because you design and implement new hardware from it. Hardware is always concurrent. Whereas C is executed on a Micrprocessor which execute instructions one by one.

 

[SmartBomb1979]

Re: Device Driver

Often the OS will run in "supervisor" or "priveleged" mode, and the user tasks/threads run in "user" mode.... the driver is a bridge between access to the hardware (which can normally only be done in priveleged mode) and the user threads which process the data.

If you are running on a simple micro or without an OS, the concept of device driver becomes a little murky... simple systems often do away with the "driver layer" and just allow threads to access hardware directly.