What is a device driver in operating systems?
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The driver is a piece of software that translates the functionality of a device into a format that the operating system expects. The creator of a PC component can take certain liberties in its design to make it have the best possible performance under the constraints of space and power consumption. Other programs expect all devices of a category, such as sound cards or printers, to behave in the same way without accounting for special cases when a new model is released. The driver accomplished that. It allows a new device work in an operating system programmed years ago.
A firmware is compact low level software that is written into the memory of the device itself as opposed to being loaded from the hard disk. It allows the device to perform some basic functions autonomously without immediate direction from the central processor, like turning on, moving a motor, illuminating indicators, combining data from its sensors to be presented to the computer as a packet.
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