What's new in Windows Server 2022

This section describes new features and updates for driver development in Windows Server 2022.

Kernel

DMA/MDL updates

New API pages:

• PCREATE_COMMON_BUFFER_FROM_MDL callback function
• DMA_COMMON_BUFFER_EXTENDED_CONFIGURATION_TYPE enumeration
• DMA_COMMON_BUFFER_EXTENDED_CONFIGURATION_ACCESS_TYPE enumeration
• DMA_COMMON_BUFFER_EXTENDED_CONFIGURATION structure

Updated:

• DMA_OPERATIONS structure (new field CreateCommonBufferFromMdl)

NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access)

New API pages:

• KeQueryNodeActiveAffinity2
• KeQueryNodeActiveProcessorCount

Updated:

• KeQueryNodeActiveAffinity
• xKeQueryLogicalProcessorRelationship

NetAdapterCx

• The new NetAdapterCx platform-level device reset (PLDR) feature provides an effective way to reset and recover malfunctioning network devices without rebooting the system.

• NetAdapterCx support for the following hardware offloads has been updated:

  • Checksum offload

  • Generic send offload (GSO)

  • Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC)

Networking

New network driver documentation and features include:

• The new NDIS packet timestamping feature supports the hardware timestamping capability of a network interface card (NIC) for the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) version 2.

• The new NDIS Poll Mode feature is an OS controlled polling execution model that drives the network interface datapath.

• The Virtual Machine Multiple Queues (VMMQ) NIC offload technology extends Native RSS (RSSv1) to a Hyper-V virtual environment.

Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF)

In Windows Server 2022, the Windows Driver Framework (WDF) includes Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KMDF) version 1.33 and User-Mode Driver Framework (UMDF) version 2.33.

For info on what's included in these framework versions, see What's New for WDF Drivers in Windows 10. To see what was added in previous versions of WDF, see:

• KMDF Version History
• UMDF Version History

Debugger

For information on what is new on the WinDbg Preview debugger, see WinDbg Preview - What's New. Highlights include:

• Portable PDB Symbols support.
• Support for Open Enclave debugging- WinDbg Preview can now debug Open Enclave (OE) applications.
• For user mode time travel debugging, a new timeline window displays a visual representation of important events in your trace: exceptions, breakpoints, function calls, and memory accesses. For more information, see WinDbg Preview - Timeline.

Updates and additions to debug transport topics, such as Setting Up KDNET Network Kernel Debugging Automatically, Setting Up Kernel-Mode Debugging over USB EEM on an Arm device using KDNET and Setting Up 2PF Kernel-Mode Debugging using KDNET.

Bugcheck stop code topic addtions and updates, including listing live dump codes in a new section - Kernel Live Dump Code Reference.

Driver Quality

New CodeQL and the Static Tools Logo Test and Supplemental Windows Driver CodeQL Queries.

Updates and additions to Driver Verifier rules, for example the new DoubleFetch rule.

Driver Security

Updates to the Driver Security Checklist.

Audio

Updated and new topics including:

• Default Audio Endpoint Selection Starting in Windows 10
• Multiple Voice Assistant
• Voice Activation
• Low Latency Audio

New online help for the KsStudio Utility.