device driver

Also known as driver, driver software

computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device

AI overview

A device driver is a computer program that allows your operating system to communicate with and control a specific piece of hardware, like a printer, graphics card, or network adapter. Without device drivers, your operating system wouldn't know how to send commands to these devices or understand the information they send back.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

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Stack Exchange tag: superuser.com/tags/drivers
Commons category: Hardware drivers

Sources (1)

wikidata.org

via Wikidata · CC0

~14 min read

Article

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.