DirectX 12 to Be Unveiled At GDC 2014
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2014 8:34 PM EST
Picking up from where we left off with last week’s discussion of GDC presentations, Microsoft has released a short teaser regarding their GDC presentation. The previously mentioned “DirectX: Evolving Microsoft's Graphics Platform” session isn’t just a session on low-level APIs, as we first surmised, but will in fact be the formal unveiling of DirectX 12.
Just what DirectX 12 will contain remains to be seen. Given the session descriptions for this and other sessions, low-level (ish) interfaces for Direct3D seems likely. But it’s not clear if there are updates in store for any of the other components of DirectX.
Historically speaking, Microsoft has been overdue for a new DirectX announcement. Other than the various point updates over the last couple of years, Microsoft hasn’t had a major DirectX announcement since DirectX 11 in 2009, with DirectX 10 coming 3 years before that in 2006.
In the meantime it’s interesting to note who’s listed as a participating partner in Microsoft’s tease. The big 3 – AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA – are included, but so is Qualcomm. Qualcomm of course is not a player in the traditional dGPU or x86 iGPU spaces, but they are a significant vendor in the Windows on ARM space, having their SoCs in products such as the Nokia Lumia tablets. Consequently, with Microsoft continuing to push into the tablet space with Windows RT, it stands to reason that some of DirectX 12's functionality will be tuned for tablets too.
Anyhow, we’ll have more details on March 20th when Microsoft makes their formal presentation.
Source: Microsoft
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
przemo_li - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
One should always remember that up to now MS was SOLELY focused on DX for Xbox One.And they had "future tools" when AMD claimed "No next gen API".
So this DX12 may be re branded DX11.2+ the high level API used on Xbox One. That would not be the first PR stunt in IT history.
Anyway. Today is speculation. Speculation MS wants to stir in favorable direction (DX12, 12 man! 12 !!!). Will see how it compares to OpenGL 4.4 (yeah, DX need to do some catching up), let alone if it contain any lower level APIs.
Imaginer - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I would be estatic if DirectX can work over Remote Desktop. I know it can be possible, since elements of Remote Desktop (off of the top of my head) do work in Remote Desktop.That is a significant thing I would like to hear.
SarahKerrigan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
RemoteFX may interest you.chizow - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I guess this spells the official end of the Mantle Project. Won't be a total waste I suppose, AMD should be able to port their low-level extensions to DX12 pretty easily. But that was a pretty big gambit with the resources spent (2yrs + $5-8M) that doesn't look like it will pay off for AMD.Th-z - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Way too early to tell, and Mantle can be cross-platform while DX is not. There is still advantage for AMD to keep Mantle for other OSes in addition to Windows.chizow - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I have a feeling OpenGL will follow suit and mirror DirectX as that has been the pattern in recent history. OpenGL will fill that cross platform gap.crazyfrog - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Microsoft will probably make all our Directx 11 cards outdated so we have to buy new ones. Most likely octa core cpus. I'll probably have a 2tflop vintage card in a few months :(Sivar - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Someone needs to tell Microsoft:From http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/04/12/18472...
"AMD Vice President of Global Channel Sales Roy Taylor has said there will be no DirectX12 at any time in the future. In an interview with German magazine Heise.de, Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card. One of the reasons for this, he said, is that the DirectX update cycle is no longer driving the market. 'There will be no DirectX 12. That's it.'"
grndzro77 - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
When he said that it was true.