Device Drivers and VM's

Device Drivers

Definition

A piece of software, usually supplied with a device > Controls piece of hardware > Provides a bridge between device and OS.

Why?

OS are expected to communicate with a wide variety of devices (hardware) all from different models and manufactures. It's impossible for an OS maker to handle all existing models and manufacturers; so we need to Device Drivers to tell the OS how it can communicate with it.

Virtual Machines

Definition

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