HDF Overview

Introduction

The Hardware Driver Foundation (HDF) provides driver framework capabilities, such as driver loading, driver service management, driver messaging mechanism, and configuration management, for driver developers. It strives to provide a more precise and efficient driver development environment, where you can perform one-time development for multi-device deployment.

Driver Loading

The HDF supports the following loading modes:

• On-demand loading

  The HDF allows drivers to be loaded by default during the operating system (OS) boot process or dynamically loaded after the OS is started.

• Sequential loading

  The HDF allows drivers to be loaded based on their priorities during the OS boot process.

Driver Service Management

The HDF supports centralized management of driver services. You can obtain a driver service by using the API provided by the HDF.

Driver Messaging Mechanism

The HDF provides a unified driver messaging mechanism, which allows messages to be exchanged between user-mode applications and kernel-mode drivers.

Configuration Management

HDF Configuration Source (HCS) provides the source code that describes the HDF configuration in key-value pairs. It decouples the configuration code from driver code, simplifying configuration management.