The frame buffer device provides an abstraction for the graphics hardware. It represents the frame buffer of some video hardware and allows application software to access the graphics hardware through a well-defined interface, so the software doesn't need to know anything about the low-level (hardware register) stuff.
The device is accessed through special device nodes, usually located in the /dev directory, i.e. /dev/fb*.
See the Documentation/framebuffer.txt file in the Linux source code.