Microsoft have begun to detail what developers can expect from the new DirectX 11, which is said to be compatible with current DX10 and 10.1 hardware.
It will support new compute shader technology which will let devs utilise the GPU of graphics cards ”as a parallel processor”, and not just for ”3D graphics”.
There’s no launch date for the new DirectX, which is to be fully supported on Windows Vista and beyond, but the corporate giant have released a bullet point features list:
o Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
o Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
o New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
o Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
o Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close
Greater support for multi-core processors is a definate must as more users are upgrading to the new lines from Intel and AMD - in fact only dual cored processors are already considered out of date.
DirectX 10 is native only to Windows VistaSource: Shacknews
