New in D3D12 – background shader optimizations

Shawn Hargreaves April 16, 2019 Apr 16, 2019 04/16/19

tl;dr; In the next update to Windows, codenamed 19H1, D3D12 will allow drivers to use idle priority background CPU threads to dynamically recompile shader programs. This can improve GPU performance by specializing shader code to better match details of the hardware it is running on and/or the context in which it is being used. Developers don...

DirectX engineering specs published

Shawn Hargreaves April 9, 2019 Apr 9, 2019 04/9/19

Engineering specs for a number of DirectX features, including DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, and all of D3D11, are now available at https://microsoft.github.io/DirectX-Specs. This supplements the official API documentation with an extra level of detail that can be useful to expert developers. The specs are licensed under ...

New in D3D12 – GPU-Based Validation (GBV) is now available for Shader Model 6.x

D3D Team April 2, 2019 Apr 2, 2019 04/2/19

In the next update to Windows, codenamed 19H1, the DirectX12 debug layer adds support for GPU-based validation (GBV) of shader model 6.x (DXIL) as well as the previously supported shader model 5.x (DXBC). GBV is a GPU timeline validation that modifies and injects validation instructions directly into application shaders. It can provide more...