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AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsJameel Hyder, Mark R. Sestak, Kenneth G. Richards, Thomas W. Green, John N. Fuller, Georgios Chrysanthakopoulos
Estimating the term…
Methods, systems, and computer program products for abstracting device driver development by layering certain functionality. A driver layer encapsulates device commands and data within a format that is independent of the type of connection between the device and a host computer. Once encapsulated, the device commands and data pass through an intermediate layer responsible for transferring the encapsulated device commands and data to a connection-specific layer. The connection-specific layer then places the encapsulated device commands and data on the particular connection that couples the device and host computer. A single driver layer, potentially provided by an operating system, can thus operate a plurality of devices. Accordingly, hardware developers can be freed from the burden of writing the numerous host-based device drivers that are otherwise required to support an increasing number of connections between devices and host computers, specifically exemplified by improved bus and networking technologies.
A method of simplifying device driver development for a device connected to a host computer, the method comprising the steps of:
A method for creating a device driver that eliminates the need for hardware vendors to write host-based device drivers, the method comprising the steps of:
A system for abstracting device driver development by layering driver functionality, the system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.