One of my favorite sites for HW and other related computer news is TechPowerUp. Every so often I come across a news item there that might be of interest to WGS readers. Just so with the following Windows 7/DirectX 10 tidbit.
One of the new SW technologies released as part if Vista was DirectX 10. If you did not have the HW to support DirectX 10 calls, it did not do you much good. Microsoft is addressing that in the upcoming Windows 7 OS with a SW implementation of DirectX 10 called WARP10. From TechPowerUp:
Back when Redmond was gearing up for the launch of Windows Vista, the PC hardware industry had its own plans, of brandishing support for the new operating system. Microsoft then came up with its “Windows Vista-Capable” hardware tag, which eventually put the company into an embarrassing situation where users would rant about their hardware, more so branded PCs and notebooks, being anything but capable of the OS. That was because vendors sold PCs with dated DirectX 9 supportive hardware, which didn’t quite qualify to be “capable” of the DirectX 10 API the OS shipped with. The company even saw itself facing charges for false marketing.
To avoid that happening with the next release of the OS, Windows 7, Microsoft shaped up the Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP10). WARP10 is a component of the DirectX 10 API that provides software rasterization for all DirectX 10 calls, using every available hardware component the PC has. Think of it as 100% software acceleration in the absence of compliant hardware. It is shipping in beta form in the November 2008 DirectX SDK. Now, even a Pentium III 800 MHz will be “capable” of rendering Direct3D 10 scenes, as Microsoft puts it. With this, Microsoft guarantees that any and every PC or notebook carrying the “Vista Capable” sticker would be able to use every single feature the OS has to offer, including DirectX 10. WARP10 benefits from multi-threaded and multi-core CPUs, with specific benefits coming out from the availability of SSE4.1 instruction sets. Microsoft claims that even the CPU in Windows Vista’s minimum system requirements list will be capable of WARP10. The excitement however, dies down when you find out just how capable today’s CPUs are in accelerating 3D: An Intel Core i7 was able to “run” Crysis, on a resolution of 800 x 600, churning out a proud 7.36 frames per second (at least it managed to beat Intel’s best integrated graphics). To learn more about WARP10, visit this page.
While SW implementation may not give you great performance, it is a step in the right direction. SW implementation is probably never going to be a substitute for HW implementation, but by the time Windows 7 is released I would hope that many of the performance issues will be addressed.
