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The Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF) model continues to allow development of kernel-mode device drivers but attempts to provide standard implementations of functions that are known to cause problems, including cancellation of I/O operations, power management, and plug-and-play device support.
The device driver.. Device drivers are programs which allow software or higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device. These software components act as a link between the devices and the operating systems, communicating with each of these systems and executing commands.
Function driver: this is the principal driver for a device and it provides the operational interface for a device by handling read and write operations. Function drivers are written by the device vendors, and for their interaction with the hardware they depend on a specific bus driver being present in the Windows operating system.
Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF, formerly Windows Driver Foundation), is a set of Microsoft tools and libraries that aid in the creation of device drivers for Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows. It complements Windows Driver Model, abstracting away much of the boilerplate complexity in writing Windows drivers.
WDM is the driver model used since the advent of Windows 98, whereas KMDF is the driver framework Microsoft advocates and uses for Windows 2000 and beyond. In general, since more features like power management and plug and play are handled by the KMDF framework, a KMDF driver is less complicated and has less code than an equivalent WDM driver.
Historically, drivers were less of a problem, as the number of devices was small and trusted anyway, so having them in the kernel simplified the design and avoided potential performance problems. This led to the traditional driver-in-the-kernel style of Unix, [23] Linux, and Windows NT. With the proliferation of various kinds of peripherals ...
Intermediate drivers rely on the lowest level drivers to function. The Windows Driver Model (WDM) exists in the intermediate layer. The lowest level drivers are either legacy Windows NT device drivers that control a device directly or can be a PnP hardware bus. These lower level drivers directly control hardware and do not rely on any other ...
The new driver model requires the graphics hardware to have Shader Model 2.0 support at least, since the fixed function pipeline is now translated to 2.0 shaders. However, according to Microsoft as of 2009, only about 1–2 percent of the hardware running Windows Vista used the XDDM, [10] with the rest already WDDM capable.