Microsoft takes a nice HDD step forward with DirectStorage 1.2

Microsoft takes a nice HDD step forward with DirectStorage 12


software giant Microsoft, Noteworthy on the Windows side DirectStorage to develop technology continues.

Microsoft, Reducing the overhead to the CPU and IO (Input / Output) DirectStorage for Windows to increase throughput when made availableshared that the next step in the roadmap is GPU decompression. In the past year, the company DirectStorage 1.1 He stated that the infrastructure was in the final stage of development and that they were planning to present the system to developers by the end of 2022. The software giant who is quick on this issue Microsoftgraphics card manufacturers (AMD, Nvidia and Intel) and activated for developers. Alright What exactly did DirectStorage 1.1 do or bring? In this regard, Microsoft cites: “Games carry huge amounts of data assets to create huge worlds, and these assets can reach hundreds of gigabytes in size. These assets or objects are compressed to reduce the overall package size of a game. When a game is run, the assets used are transferred to the system memory, where the CPU (Processor) steps in, opening the data for use as needed before copying it to the GPU (Video card) memory. Transferring and unlocking these assets to devices greatly impacts load times and limits the level of detail of open worlds.

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DirectStorage 1.0 improves the data transfer part of this process. Windows 11 with DirectStorage allows developers to take advantage of the higher bandwidth of NVMe SSD drives. DirectStorage-enabled games installed on NVMe drives reduce load times by up to 40 percent. Since compression formats are generally only optimized for CPUs, the decompression work is usually done on the CPU. By moving the decompression of these assets to the GPU in DirectStorage 1.1, We offer an alternative method referred to as “GPU decompression”. Graphics cards are extremely efficient at performing repeatable tasks in parallel. So we can combine this capability in GPUs with the bandwidth of high-speed NVMe drives to get more done at the same time.”

In conclusion DirectStorage 1.1 With this, the time required to load an object / asset for a game is reduced, chapter loading times are shortened, and open world games can be made more fluid and uninterrupted. This is the infrastructure that game developers must support, Now it has been made much more comfortable to use for HDD. Stating that he received feedback from game developers on this issue, Microsoft knows that there are still players using HDDs and DirectStorage 1.2 together with technology finishes separation of HDD and NVMe in use. Reportedly, parts of DirectStorage always ran on HDDs, but developers had to use separate methods for NVMe storage units and HDDs. As you can imagine, this made the development process difficult and kept developers away. Sent With DirectStorage version 1.2, developers can now use the same code on both SSDs and HDDs. This really means a huge time saver, the infrastructure of games that actively support the technology. It makes it load much faster from HDDs than before.

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