Introduction to programming a UDI driver

Introduction to programming a UDI driver

Programming a device driver to the UDI specifications has some significant differences from programming to traditional driver programming models. The differences lie in the layers of abstraction that encapsulate UDI components and shield your code from needing to know intimate details of the target operating system.

By using only UDI interfaces to talk to the OS (in the form of the GIO and External Mappers provided in the UDI environment on the target OS), a UDI driver is able to access OS services in a system- and platform-independent manner.

On the other side, where the driver interfaces with the target device and system hardware, a layer of abstraction provided by the target OS's UDI environment provides a similarly consistent interface to Direct Memory Access (DMA), interrupt processing, and the system bus, and insulates the driver from byte-ordering considerations.