Not the GP, but to me the only difference between firmware and software is that firmware is often (but not always) "burned" right into a piece of hardware, whic

Not the GP, but to me the only difference between firmware and software is that firmware is often (but not always) "burned" right into a piece of hardware, which is usually a chip that has a microcontroller of some sort inside it. The PC BIOS is also called firmware sometimes - because it is "burned" into the PC itself. A device driver, on the other hand, can be implemented in software or firmware, or, usually these days, as a combination of both. Drivers indeed are magic - since they usually designed to interact with, and to control, physical systems, they must work in real time, and writing a driver requires understanding the system's behavior to a minute detail.