Entries tagged with drivers - Channel 9

Byron Cook: Terminator - Proving Good Things Will Eventually Happen

Charles — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:31:52 GMT

Here's another installment from MSR Cambridge (much more to come). This time, I was lucky enough to get some time with Byron Cook, a researcher in MSR's Programming Principles and Tools group focusing on static analysis of system code to hunt for algorithms and code fragments that will most likely induce a system state lovingly referred to by all as a Hang. You know, when nothing seems to work anymore, you can't use your mouse or keyboard, windows are frozen in time and you resort to a hard reboot. Well, what is a hang, exactly? How is a hang directly related to events? Did you know that a typical hang is event-related (never ending event response) caused by kernel mode code (drivers mostly) that never, well, terminates?

Byron and team have written a very interesting tool that analyzes code, tests it against proofs of correctness (mathematical proofs, indeed) and alerts developers at design time that some code they've written is heading down a very slippery slope that will end in a hang. Terminator is proof based. OK. How does Terminator work, you ask? Proofs? It's all about prooving termination.

Please tune in and find out. This is a really cool introduction to the notion of mathematically prooving that good things will eventually happen in code.

PS. I just found out that, like myself, Byron is an Evergreen State College alumnus. Small world!

Cakewalk: Making Music with Sonar

Charles — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:47:51 GMT

The guys at Cakewalk are passionate about music and providing the technology that enables audio enthusiasts & professionals to create great music. Noel Borthwick, Cakewalk CTO and Carl Jacobson, Woldwide Marketing Director, spend some time with Inside Out talking about their lessons learned as an early Vista adopter for their audio application Sonar, which also is the only application of its kind for the 64-bit platform.

They also talk candidly about the development process and experiences with managed code, certification documentation and virtualization.

PrintVerifier demo

nsashwin — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:07:47 GMT

PrintVerifier is a powerful tool that can be used for development and testing of print drivers and print applications. This is a screencast of a demo of the PrintVerifier tool that is to be presented at WinHEC 2007.

For more information on PrintVerifier, visit http://blogs.msdn.com/PrintVerifier.

Driver Development and Much More With Mike Calligaro

Rory — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:38:37 GMT

Mike Calligaro came to Microsoft thirteen years ago to help build a supercomputer. But, two days before his arrival, the project evaporated, leaving Mike on the payroll but without a position.

This isn't an unheard of situation for new hires, but Mike's story, detailing all the different projects he worked on throughout the years, is just fantastic.

We get to hear about his work on the Sega Dreamcast, an early attempt at providing video-on-demand in the home (in 1994!), and the best explanation ever given as to what a device driver is and how they work.

I'm hoping to visit Mike again. I found him through some posts he wrote for the Windows Mobile blog. I found him to be thoughtful and interesting - he was the same in person. One of those hidden gems at the company.

He has more stories to tell, and I hope to get him to divulge more of his past for the camera. People like Mike impress me because of their ability to approach many different disciplines with great success.

This video, I feel, only scratches the surface...

The Advancement of Windows: Narayanan Ganapathy - Windows Vista IO

Charles — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 21:25:06 GMT

From the kernel to the shell, Windows Vista is a very different OS than XPSP2. How so?

Here, Charles interviews Architect Narayanan Ganapathy whose team of highly skilled engineers write the Windows IO system, driver frameworks and related technologies. So, what, exactly, is new in Windows Vista with regard to IO? What does it mean, exactly, to users and developers?

Tune in. Learn.

Erik Gubitz and Ferdous Rubaiyat: Inside the Driver Installation Framework

Charles — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:43:41 GMT

Installing drivers is sometimes difficult to understand process for users, but getting drivers on to a machine is not as easy as you think, from a developer point of view. In fact, installation is often quite a hard problem for driver developers to get right...

Well, Erik Gubitz, SDE, and Ferdous Rubaiyat, SDET, work on the Driver Installation Framework, which provides a set of APIs that promise to make the installation process less turbulent for both users, indirectly, and driver devlopers, directly(via APIs...), alike.

Meet two of the engineers behind a great installation technology that will make your life easier if you write drivers for Windows.

Peter Wieland: User Mode Driver Framework

Charles — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 20:33:45 GMT

In Windows Vista, we have moved many drivers out of the kernel and up into user mode, which will greatly decrease the potential for blue screens and other bad things. As always, we love making Frameworks for developers that enable them to get things done faster, even for low level stuff like drivers.

You've learned about the WHDC’s site on UMDF - It has some white papers and WinHEC 2006 presentations including Peter's “Technical Synopsis” which has a PPT animation of how I/O flows through UMDF (slides 10 and 11 show I/O flow for a kernel stack and then a user-mode stack.)

The UMDF beta is part of the Windows Drivers Kit (WDK) beta which can be joined at http://connect.microsoft.com. Peter posted some instructions a while back on his blog about how to get into the WDK beta.

Peter's blog is http://blogs.msdn.com/peterwie. "I’m not as active as I’d like to be, but there’s a long series there on DMA and drivers that folks seem to like."

Juggs Ravalia – Windows CE 6.0 Device Driver Model

Charles — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:06:48 GMT

The upcoming release of Windows CE 6.0 ships with a redesigned kernel, memory model and device driver architecture, Juggs Ravalia is a Program Manager on the Windows CE drivers team who gives us the low down on the new driver architecture and what that means for embedded device developers. Mike Hall, Senior Product Manager and Channel 9 correpsondent, conducts this interview.

Donn Terry: PreFAST for Drivers

Charles — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 17:54:50 GMT

Donn Terry is a Software Developer who's been writing driver code for Windows for a very long time... He's the guy who's been working on PreFAST for drivers (PFD) for the past several years. PFD is a really handy static analysis tool used by driver developers to find bugs in their code that would otherwise go undetected until blue-screening Windows (assuming the drivers are running in the kernel) and other bad things.

Doron Holan - Kernel Mode Driver Framework

HumanCompiler — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:42:53 GMT

It's hard to write kernel mode drivers. Real hard. In fact, it's hard to believe how hard it is. Well, the Windows Driver People have been working tirelessly to make it a little less hard (not easy) to write kernel mode drivers that won't hose your system. You know, blue screen of death and the like. If you write kernel mode drivers you really should watch this video. You will be impressed with the work that has gone into the Kernel Mode Driver Framework. This framework abstracts some of the pain points away for driver developers giving them the freedom to concentrate on their algorithms related to device usability...

Find out more about KMDF and related technologies (and get the bits!)

KMDF Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/doronh/

KMDF homepage: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdf/KMDF.mspx

KMDF bits (v1.1 right now): http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdf/KMDF_pkg.mspx

WDF: (UMDF, verification tools): http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdf/default.mspx