With the advent of multiplatform support, which involves non-x86 platforms as well as peripheral chipsets across these multiple platforms, we don't want to have to write different versions of device drivers for each and every platform.
While some platform dependencies are unavoidable, let's talk about some of the things that you as a developer can do to minimize the impact. At QNX Software Systems, we've had to deal with these same issues—for example, we support the 8250 serial chip on several different types of processors. Ethernet controllers and others are no exception.
Let's look at these problems: