driverinitiated

Driver-initiated refers to actions or commands that originate from a device driver, rather than from a user-space application or from hardware itself. Drivers manage specific hardware devices, translate OS requests into device-specific operations, and coordinate timing of device activity. When an operation is described as driver-initiated, the driver is the one initiating the action and coordinating its execution with the hardware or other system components.

It contrasts with host-initiated or hardware-initiated activity. Driver-initiated operations can include I/O requests, register programming, power-management transitions, or recovery actions such as resets. The driver may also start polling, configuring DMA, or handling state changes.

Examples include a storage driver issuing reads or writes to a disk controller, a graphics driver submitting command buffers to a GPU, or a network driver starting a data transfer. Firmware updates and device self-tests may also be driven by the driver.

Because drivers run in privileged contexts, driver-initiated actions carry risks to system stability, security, and data integrity. Proper synchronization, robust error handling, and strict access control are essential, since misbehaving drivers can cause crashes, data corruption, or privilege escalations.

In modern architectures, drivers often use asynchronous I/O models, queuing requests and handling completions without blocking user applications. The term appears across operating systems and domains—storage, graphics, and networking—to distinguish software-initiated actions from other sources of work.