SCO and the Uniform Driver Interface (UDI)

The SCO Group, Inc. (SCO) is advancing the state of the art in device driver technology. As an active member of Project UDI, the industry group that designed UDI (the Uniform Driver Interface), SCO has worked jointly with a number of system vendors and IHVs, including Adaptec, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Interphase, Lockheed Martin, SBS Technologies, STG, Sun Microsystems and Unisys, to define and promote a cross-vendor, cross-platform device driver interface.

UDI support and development kit are provide with SCO UnixWare operating system starting with UnixWare 7.1.2 (also known as OpenUNIX 8.0.0) and OpenServer 5.0.7. The udienv package provides UDI support and the udidk package provides the UDK development kit. These products are based on the final review draft of the 1.01 UDI Specifications.

The UDI 1.01 specification set is available from Project UDI .

UDI is a device driver interface that allows one driver to be run on a variety of operating systems. A driver that is coded to the UDI specification can run on any operating system for which UDI support is available; it will no longer need to be rewritten to use each system's specific set of functions and structures. A driver coded to UDI would use UDI interfaces rather than DDI, SDI, MDI or other proprietary OS interfaces. Generally, though, the same functionality, or a superset, is available in UDI.

Implementations of the UDI environment have been demonstrated on UnixWare 7, OpenServer 5, OpenServer 6, and UnixWare 2.1, along with operating systems from other vendors. See the Project UDI web site for a complete list.

UDI support will be included in all SCO operating systems, including OpenServer 5, OpenServer 6, and UnixWare 7.