*I write kernel mode drivers as my day job, and this is certainly the first time...

I write kernel mode drivers as my day job, and this is certainly the first time I've ever heard of non-swappable being called "wired".

For what OS? Consider https://wiki.freebsd.org/Memory

Wired

    - Non-pageable memory: cannot be freed until explicitly released by the owner
    - Userland memory can be wired by mlock(2) (subject to system and per-user limits)
    - Kernel memory allocators return wired memory
    - Contents of the ARC and the buffer cache are wired
    - Some memory is permanently wired and is never freed (e.g., the kernel file itself)

OSX is derived from BSD.