The OX16PCI952 is a PCI-based UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) chip produced by Oxford Semiconductor, which is now part of Microchip Technology. It provides multiple serial communication ports to a computer, allowing you to add several UART interfaces to a system that supports PCI expansion cards.

In the context of the OX16PCI952 device, the driver software enables the operating system (in this case, Windows) to communicate with the hardware and manage the serial communication ports correctly. This driver is necessary for ensuring that the system recognizes and correctly interfaces with the OX16PCI952 chip, making the serial ports available for applications that need them.