Patent ID: 7493626

Claim:
A method for communicating between device drivers within a computing system, comprising: determining a need to invoke a function on a remote device from a local device driver that is associated with a local device, wherein the local device driver is not configured to perform the function on the remote device, wherein the local device and the remote device are different device types, and wherein the remote device is located on the same computing system as the local device, and the remote device and the local device are on different branches of a device tree for the computing system; prior to determining the need to invoke the function, during a computer system boot sequence: identifying devices within the computer system, building a device tree, including nodes for the identified devices, and assigning each device a unique ID; obtaining a unique identifier for a remote device driver capable of performing the function on the remote device; using the unique identifier to facilitate invoking the function in the remote device driver from the local device driver; and storing the unique identifier at the local device driver as a property of the local device driver to facilitate identifying the remote device driver capable of performing the function during subsequent invocations of the function.