Uniform Driver Interface: Difference between revisions

A module is essentially a single executable code object. Specifically, drivers can be broken into multiple executables. A large driver that may only need to load certain components and may not need all of its code in memory all the time may be implemented as a multi-module driver. This partitioning of the driver code into modules is up to the driver vendor of course. Most UDI drivers are expected to be single-module drivers, but complex drivers such as graphics card drivers, etc may be best implemented as multi-module drivers. For example, if a graphics driver exports an OpenGL 3D API along with a Direct3D API, it is very likely that both front-ends have a lot of code behind them that would occupy a lot of memory should both be loaded. Most kernels will use ''either'' OpenGL ''or'' Direct3D, so if such a graphics driver was to split its OpenGL and Direct3D implementations into separate modules, this would enable kernels loading that driver to avoid allocating memory for the code and data for the API it isn't using.