The GPU Technology Conference: NVIDIA's New Focus in a Changing Market

NVIDIA’s New Push: DX11 & DirectCompute

Despite what many may have heard courtesy of some half-baked PR agency’s knee-jerk email, at the GTC NVIDIA was showing their support for the upcoming DX11 API in a big way. Even though they don’t have an architecture that supports DirectX 11 at this point, there were quite a few sessions dedicated to this new API along with DirectX Compute. Many of the sessions were primers for developers who are in the process of looking into using these new tools to advance their game development process.


One of the main focuses of Microsoft’s DirectX 11 is to streamline the development process while enhancing overall efficiency. In layman’s terms this means easier, faster game development using advanced graphical features that won’t take up additional resources on the GPU. Hopefully, new mentalities such as this will rub off and we will see DX11 take off quicker than DX10 / 10.1 ever did as those past API’s never really got off the ground.

Another benefit of writing for the DX11 API is the fact that unlike DX10, there is no reason to write a whole new code path just for DX9 compliance. According to many developers we have talked to, it was the necessity of writing separate paths for older DX9 hardware that stymied their enthusiasm for DX10. All a developer has to do is specify the features they want to run given a set of hardware circumstances and they are off to the races with support for current and past APIs.


The efficiency of DX11 comes through a number of advances which allow programmers flexibility without the need to dedicate more computational resources for models or scenes with higher detail levels. In just one example, NVIDIA demonstrated how a simple move away from a regular triangle mesh towards a more compact DX11 compression method can virtually eliminate memory bottlenecks. This will allow developers to create more detailed environments without having to worry about GPU texture memory restrictions.

With support for hardware tessellation, two new completely programmable shading stages (Hull Shader and Domain Shader) and a whole toolbox of other feautres that will help developers realize their goals, we are hoping DirectX 11 will catch on quickly. Contrary to some rumors, NVIDIA seems to be taking DX11 very seriously indeed.



The availability of DX11 will also usher in the age of DirectCompute11 which will allow even more calculations to be shunted towards the GPU. Through the use of programmable compute shaders, DirectCompute 11 is able to accelerate everything from enemy AI to the movement of objects through a specific scene. Additional image post-processing techniques like blur, soft shadows and depth of field can be made more efficient through the use of Compute Shader Model 5.0 as well.

NVIDIA’s team is currently heading up additional initiatives with developers to make sure they are able to make the most out of these DX11 features. From what we can tell, the DX11 generation should bring about more lifelike visuals than ever before while making high detail levels much more accessible to people with lower-spec’d cards.