driver

views updated Jun 11 2018

driv·er / ˈdrīvər/ • n. 1. a person who drives a vehicle: a taxi driver | student drivers. ∎  a person who drives a specified kind of animal: mule drivers.2. a wheel or other part in a mechanism that receives power directly and transmits motion to other parts. ∎  Electr. a device or part of a circuit that provides power for output. ∎  Comput. a program that controls the operation of a device such as a printer or scanner.3. a golf club with a flat face and wooden head, used for driving from the tee.PHRASES: in the driver's seat in control of or dominating a situation: the tax issue is back in the driver's seat of American politics.DERIVATIVES: driv·er·less adj.

driver

views updated Jun 27 2018

driver
1. A routine within an operating system that handles the individual peripheral units on the computer system. Of necessity a driver routine is required to deal with the intimate details of the construction of each unit and of its real-time behavior. Consequently at least some of the driver will often need to be written in a machine-oriented programming language.

2. An electronic circuit, often available in the form of a logic gate, that is capable of providing large currents or voltages to other circuits connected to the driver's output. These devices are often used to place signals onto bus lines, hence the term bus driver.