What is the difference between Device Driver and Firmware in IO cards ?
 

Hi

What is the difference between device driver and firmware in IO cards?

Let me clarify what I knew

Device driver(low-level) is the one that speaks to IO devices via registers. We identify address (memory map and IO map) of these registers using Base Address Register(BAR) info from PCI configuration space and access them through IN/OUT instructions from CPU(in case of IO MAP)and program these registers by reading through each register description in IO vendor device specification. Device driver is controlled by OS Kernel(CPU).

Firmware is the one that resides in IO device flash memory.

Please correct if am wrong

Questions
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What is the use of firmware that resides in flash with IO device?

What are contents of firmware that resides in Flash either code or data?

Where does it gets executes in Host CPU or some embedded processors in IO device itself?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Rajiv

What about asking another related topic the CMOS? Coreboot and UEFI ? These are important topics that every computing person must understand. I may not pretend to answer your question, I'm afraid out of my enthusiasm excesses of speech might degrade my charity.

Your questions are better answered here and here.

May this help you and good luck.