Device Driver Types (Compact 7)
3/12/2014
In Windows Embedded Compact, device drivers are DLLs that contain hardware-specific code. However, not all device drivers are used or categorized in the same way. Windows Embedded Compact classifies device drivers by using several different perspectives:
- Which interface the device driver presents to the OS and applications
- How the device driver is structured internally
- Whether the device driver runs in the kernel or in user space
- Whether the driver manages a bus
A Windows Embedded Compact device driver will exhibit some combination of these driver types, depending on how it interfaces with other software components (stream or native device driver), how it is structured internally (monolithic or layered device driver), which address space it runs in (user-mode or kernel-mode), and whether it manages a bus.