Microsoft’s DirectStorage 1.1 arrives to spice up PC sport load instances with GPU decompression

Microsoft is releasing DirectStorage 1.1 this week, and the largest new addition is GPU decompression for Windows PC video games. GPU decompression is the following pure step in an industry-wide effort to enhance sport load instances on trendy PCs. Microsoft initially launched DirectStorage earlier this 12 months, however builders have been calling out for GPU decompression assist, and it now arrives with DirectStorage 1.1 this week.

GPU decompression works by offloading the work wanted to decompress belongings in video games to the graphics card as a substitute of the CPU. Right now, sport belongings are usually compressed when they’re packaged up for distribution after which decompressed as soon as a sport is performed.

The drawback is most compression strategies are designed for CPUs, which aren’t nice for contemporary video games that wish to push for quicker decompression charges with the most recent PC {hardware}.

“Typically, decompression work is done on the CPU because compression formats have historically been optimized for CPUs only,” explains Cassie Hoef, a senior program supervisor at Microsoft. “We are offering an alternative method in DirectStorage 1.1 by moving the decompression of those assets to the GPU instead — known as GPU decompression.”

We’ve seen the {industry} transfer to PCIe Gen3 or Gen4 NVMe storage gadgets lately, providing 7GB/s of information bandwidth. This quick storage is nice information for sport builders wanting to hurry up load instances, and the advances in I/O expertise can dramatically pace up load instances and video games utilizing DirectStorage 1.1.

Developers will now have to tweak their video games to utilize DirectStorage 1.1, and the enhancements may even see huge modifications inside video games the place you progress from one world to a different or teleport between totally different components of a map or world. Microsoft claims this may be as a lot as thrice quicker, liberating up the CPU to deal with different sport processes.

Nvidia has applied its personal RTX IO within the present Game Ready Driver (model 526.47) that takes benefit of DirectStorage 1.1. AMD is working with its software vendors to finalize its drivers, and Intel’s newest Arc graphics driver (101.3793) consists of its personal optimizations for DirectStorage 1.1.

All we want now could be sport assist. DirectStorage has at all times promised blazing-fast load instances that we’re seeing on Xbox Series X consoles, however we haven’t seen many PC video games undertake this expertise but. Perhaps GPU decompression will push sport builders to essentially benefit from DirectStorage. Forspoken was imagined to be the primary huge sport with DirectStorage assist, however the title obtained delayed to January 2023.