Know the difference between Firmware, Driver and Software?

Nowadays people connected to the world of technology and not only, certainly have heard of these three terms: firmware, driver e Software. Today we are going to explain here the meaning of these terms and what is their use.

In a comprehensive and simple way, it can be said that:  firmware, driver e Software are computer programs, which aims to perform some task on the device or operating system where they are present.

firmware

O firmware was designed to inspect the hardware. This type of memory retains information, that is, the data contained therein is not lost after a power failure. Its main feature is the speed, ideal for controlling the hardware, where performance is important.

For example, in the case of computers, we can associate the Firmware with the BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) Or the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which are the basis elements for the hardware to function perfectly during this boot.

While on a computer or smartphone it is possible to install and uninstall software, firmware there is rarely a need to upgrade and would probably only be done if requested by the manufacturer to fix any issues.

driver

An operating system does not come with support for all the hardware that is part of the computer. The main mission of a driver is to interact with specific hardware (Mouse, Pen drive, HD, Projector, etc). It is known that there are currently drivers for network cards, graphics, sound, among other devices. Each driver is specific to each operating system, make and model of computer.

Thanks to the existence of drivers, most software does not have to know how to work directly with the hardware. Considering that there is a plethora of software and hardware, if everyone had to know how to communicate with each other, the process of developing software and hardware would be, say, almost unthinkable.

Currently, it is likely that some software is already capable of communicating directly with some types of hardware. In general, it is only possible if the software sends very simple commands to the hardware, or if both are developed by the same company (For example: Using a Projector from HP on an HP computer).

Software

In the world of technology, this term “Software” is quite broad, covering for example antivirus, editors (videos, text and images), browsers, and various types of applications. While hardware is something physical, software is not. An operating system is software, and allows other software to be installed on it.

Unlike hardware, the software is extremely flexible as it allows you to be continuously updated and changed, and can last indefinitely. It turns out that it can be destroyed, and if there are no backups, it may not be possible to recover it.

Conclusion:

The main difference between a firmware, driver e , consists of its design purpose. O firmware is a program that gives life to the hardware of the device. A driver is an intermediary between the operating system and the hardware component. And software makes the use of hardware the best possible way.