DirectX Developer Blog

Introducing Neural Processor Unit (NPU) support in DirectML (developer preview)

February 1, 2024 Feb 1, 2024 02/1/24

Chad Pralle

A developer preview of DirectML support for Intel® AI boost With the release of DirectML 1.13.1 and the ONNX Runtime 1.17, we are excited to announce developer preview support for NPU acceleration in DirectML, the machine learning platform API for Windows. This developer preview enables support for a subset of models on new Windows 11 ...

DirectML: Accelerating AI on Windows, now with NPUs

December 14, 2023 Dec 14, 2023 12/14/23

Chad Pralle

We are thrilled to announce our collaboration with Intel®, one of our key partners, to bring the first Neural Processing Unit (NPU) powered by DirectML on Windows. AI is transforming the world, driving innovation, and creating value across industries. NPUs are critical components in enabling amazing AI experiences for developers and consumers...

Boost Your Gen AI Experience with our DirectML extension for Automatic1111’s WebUI

November 30, 2023 Nov 30, 2023 11/30/23

Jacques van Rhyn, Anirban Roy

Olive is a powerful open-source Microsoft tool to optimize ONNX models for DirectML. You may remember from this year’s Build that we showcased Olive support for Stable Diffusion, a cutting-edge Generative AI model that creates images from text. We didn’t want to stop there, since many users access Stable Diffusion through Automatic1111'...

Announcing preview support for Llama 2 in DirectML

November 15, 2023 Nov 15, 2023 11/15/23

Jacques van Rhyn, Patrice Vignola

At Inspire this year we talked about how developers will be able to run Llama 2 on Windows with DirectML and the ONNX Runtime and we've been hard at work to make this a reality. We now have a sample showing our progress with Llama 2 7B! See https://github.com/microsoft/Olive/tree/main/examples/directml/llama_v2 This sample relies on ...

Enhanced Color Filter Controls for Windows 11

September 27, 2023 Sep 27, 2023 09/27/23

Wendy Ho

A new feature to help color blind users customize their display settings   (image) (image) (top) The Color filter preview without any color filter applied,  (bottom) Color filter preview with red-green (protanopia, red-weak) filter applied Introduction At Microsoft, we are committed to making our products and services ...

Optimizing hybrid laptop performance with Cross Adapter Scan-Out (CASO)

September 25, 2023 Sep 25, 2023 09/25/23

Neeraj Gera, James O'Connor, Chinmay Wadgaonkar

Introduction For an avid gamer, having a robust Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is non-negotiable for an optimal gaming experience. Hybrid laptops, equipped with both an integrated GPU (iGPU) and a discrete GPU (dGPU), have become a popular choice for many. If you've delved into maximizing your laptop gaming performance, you've undoubtedly ...

HLSL 2021 Migration Guide

August 14, 2023 Aug 14, 2023 08/14/23

Greg Roth

The DirectX Shader Compiler Summer 2023 release is live! The most significant change in this release is the enabling of the HLSL 2021 language version by default. HLSL 2021 includes templates, operator overloads, bitfields, short-circuiting, and modernizations to loop variable scope and implicit struct casting. You can read about the details ...

D3D12 Work Graphs Preview

June 22, 2023 Jun 22, 2023 06/22/23

Amar Patel, Tex Riddell

Contents Introduction to work graphs Work graphs are a system for GPU autonomy in D3D12. Given the increasing prevalence of general compute workloads on GPUs, the motivation is to address some limitations in their programming model, unlock latent ...

Agility SDK 1.711.3-preview: Work Graphs, Wave Matrix, AV1 Encoding

June 22, 2023 Jun 22, 2023 06/22/23

David Cook, Tex Riddell, Sil Vilerino

Hi everyone, Today we’re excited to announce the newest Preview Agility SDK v1.711.3 download; This SDK previews three new features for developers to discover.  First is Work Graphs, a new way for the GPU to create work for itself.  Second is Wave Matrix support, which allows developers to take advantage of dedicated silicon to speed...

OpenGL® on DX12 enables STEEL ASSAULT to launch on Xbox

June 16, 2023 Jun 16, 2023 06/16/23

David Cook

When we initially introduced our DirectX mapping layers, our goal was to enable applications written in other graphics APIs, including DX9, DX11 and OpenGL, to run on DirectX12 systems if a native driver is not available. We’ve written about the OpenGL mapping layer previously and how we developed it by contributing OpenGL on DX12 (GLon12) ...