Device driver

A device driver is software that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling other software to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware.

A driver communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device (drives it). Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program.

Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.