of course,any embedded product is a comb of h/w and s/w
even devoce driver is nothing but software codes which will be added to the other source codes of the os deign
these device driver code will be talking to the hardware.they will have all the details,configurations of its particular device.
say for example,there is a product wherein there is a audio codec,touchpanel,usb driver etc.
take audioi codec,the chip has got lot of hardware settings to be done,i mean initialising,configuring the registers etc.these exercises are done by its device driver,which is nothing but a set of codes.similarly for touch panle,for usb will have its own device drivers.
all these device drivers will be added to the main os deisgn while creating the complete operating system.
both the hardware and software plays its own major roles in an embd sys.may be you can say the software controls the hardware.but harware is still the brain.
Cheers!