A method and an apparatus for accessing a hardware resource are provided. The method includes configuring permission for one or more privileged instructions that are used for hardware access such that when the privileged instructions are used by a user mode application program, the application program can access a hardware resource without trapping into a kernel, and executing the privileged instructions that are encapsulated in the privileged application programming interface (API) that is called at the code level by the application program , and a privileged instruction for direct access to a hardware resource is set and encapsulated into an API, which is deployed in user space in order to reduce system overheads for accessing the hardware resource and improve processing efficiency.