DirectX

Since DirectX is build up from multiple sub-parts this document will only highlight the graphics parts in order to cut back on the size of the total document.

DirectX Programming Documentation

DirectX has had the following releases:

• 1.0 (1995) - supported with this version were:
  • Control of the graphics card's blitter.
  • Double-buffered and page flipping graphics.
  • Hardware-assisted overlays with z-ordering.
  • Improved video playback quality through access to YUV color formats.
  • Texture maps with/without palettes.
  • Z-buffers.
• 2.0 (1996) - supported with this version were:
  • DirectDraw extended with MIPmaps.
  • The Direct3D architecture introduced is built up from three modules that form a virtual 3D rendering engine:
    • Transformation module
    • Lighting module
    • Rasterisation module
• 3.0 (1996) - supported with this version were:
  • something
• 4.0 - this version has never been released to public.
• 5.0 (1997) - supported with this version were:
• 5.1 (199?) - supported with this version were:
• 5.2 (1998) - supported with this version were:
• 6.0 (1998) - supported with this version were:

  The main feature of DirectX 6 is the support for environment mapped bump mapping

• 6.1 (1999) - supported with this version were:
• 7.0 (1999) - supported with this version were:
  • Direct3D now supports device-state blocks, geometry blending, cubic environment mapping, user-defined clipping planes.
  • DirectMusic now supports the Downloadable Sounds level 2 (DLS2) standard.
  • DirectInput now supports up to eight mouse buttons, exclusive keyboard access and delayed force-feedback effect start. Also reading and writing of force-feedback effect files.
  • DirectSound features improved hardware voice management as well as new 3D audio processing algorithms (for better CPU utilisation).
  • DirectPlay supports 'ripple launching'. A ripple launch is where one application is required to launch another application.
  • DirectDraw stereo support for active devices.
• 7.0a (2000-02):
  • DirectInput provided improved force-feedback performance.
• 7.1 (2000):
• 8.0 (2000):
  • DirectShow added to the DirectX software collection.
  • DirectInput now support action mapping.
  • DirectX Audio is the name for the integrated DirectMusic and DirectSound components, allowing DirectMusic to control wave files or other resources.
  • DirectX Graphics is the name for the integrated Direct3D and DirectDraw components. Added support for programmable shaders.
  • DirectPlay now supports voice communication between players.
• 8.0a (2001)
  • DirectInput fix for disabled buttons which worked on previous of DirectX.
• 8.0b (2001):
  • D3DX library bug fix release
• 8.1 (2001):
  • New pixel shader models 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4.
  • New high precision texture formats.
  • New n-Patch quadratic interpolation order.
  • New dynamic texture support.
  • New D3DX methods.
• 8.1b (2002):
• 9.0 (2002):
  • Introduction of shader model 2.0
• 9.0a (2003):
• 9.0b (2003):
  • MIDI security fix release.
• 9.0c (2004):
  • Introduction of shader model 3.0
• 10 (2007-02):
  • http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/14/
• 10.1 (2008-03):
• 11 (2009-??):

DirectX was introduced by Microsoft in 1995. It is based on their Component Object Model (COM) technology. Thus DirectX has been object oriented from the start. Prior to version 8.0 DirectX was rather cumbersome to program, since it required a lot of complex operations. Version 4 was never released and was solely known/used in-house

DirectX specifics:

• Limited to Windows only
• basically aimed at game development
• build up from multiple subcomponents:
  • Direct3D: Direct3D provides for drawing of 3D primitives.
    • data formats:
      • Floating point z buffer formats
      • 16-bit floating point vertex and texture formats
      • 64-bit integer and 32-bit floating point texture formats
      • 10:10:10:2 pixel formats
      • Discardable depth and stencil buffers
      • Light-weight mipmap
      • two-sided stencils
    • Support for 2D/video/GDI features, including:
      • Support for video hardware acceleration
      • D operations, e.g., stretch, BLT, scissoring
      • GDI interoperability with GetDC method
      • New 3D rendering features, including:
        • Displacement maps
        • Depth biasing
        • Antialiased lines
        • Constant blend factor
        • Separate alpha channel blending
        • Multisampling quality control parameter
        • Tesselation
        • Multi-Element Texture support
        • Multiple render targets
        • Autogenerated mipmaps
        • Spherical TexGen mode
    • Miscellaneous:
      • Asynchronous notification
      • New vertex stream declarations
      • Multi-head support
      • Cleaned up interfaces to Swap Effects and Presentation Rates
      • Improved monitor refresh rate heuristics
      • Gamma correction
      • Color-converting windowed presentation
      • New vertex and pixel shader models for current and future hardware
      • Pixel shader models 2.0 and 3.0
      • Vertex shader models 2.0 and 3.0

D3DX New features:

DirectX 9 introduces a new high level shading language for shader programming. This language provides the ability to more easily write shaders with functions, arbitrary variable names, conditionals, and loops.

The shader compiler now supports the following profiles: vs_1_1, vs_2_0, ps_1_1, ps_1_2, ps_1_3, ps_1_4, ps_2_0, ps_2_sw.

A shader fragment linker has been added to facilitate the management and generation of shaders, The fragment linker links assembly or high level shading language shader fragments together. i.e. to allow mixing and matching of lighting types, skinning types, etc.

The Effect framework has undergone some exciting changes for DirectX9, specifically the addition of the ID3DXEffectCompiler interface. The Effect compiler interface can be used for shader specialization. i.e. marking a global variable as literal for a specific compile of the shader.

Added variable sharing between effects. Variables in effects files declared with the keyword "share" will be shared across all effects created with a given effect pool.

A new animation subsystem and mesh hierarchy loader are now included.

The mesh library now supports arbitrary vertex declarations (single stream only).

CloneMesh handles all data type conversions. i.e. FLOAT2 to FLOAT16_2, D3DDECLTYPE_DEC3N...

Patch support is included in the mesh library, including Adaptive tessellation.

• DirectDraw: DirectDraw provides for drawing raster graphics.
• DirectInput: DirectInput provides the developer with an interface to myriad input devices, including support for force feedback.
• DirectMusic: DirectMusic provides for playback of soundtracks. It also allows the composer to dictate what events will trigger transitions in the music to blend from one piece to another or to simply add more tempo, decrease tempo, increase volume or the intensity, all in order to supplement the gameplay. In other words it provides movie-like music control. It is based on MIDI with the Downloadable Sounds (DLS) feature to use custom sounds in combination with the MIDI power.
• DirectPlay: DirectPlay is a set of tools that simplify communications across networks, the Internet, or modems. The tools allow game players to find game sessions easily to help manage the flow between hosts and players.
• DirectSetup: DirectSetup provides a simple API for installing DirectX from your customized application. With DirectX being a complex product, this component greatly simplifies the process of installation.
• DirectShow: DirectShow provides multimedia support for video files such as AVIs and MPGs. This component of DirectX that was once an outside API is integrated with the release DirectX 8.
• DirectSound: DirectSound provides for playback and recording of waveform sound.

OpenGL

3DFX

Blah.

ATI

Blah.

Matrox

Blah.

NVIDIA®

NVIDIA generally uses the identifier NVnn to label their computer chip products. In the past a Cnn identifier has been used for a few products, all of them based on HyperTransport. More recently they seem to have started using the identifier Gnn.

• Name	NV1
  Transistors	1 million
  Background	released in September 1995, this design was based on quadratic surfaces and the system used VRAM or Fast Page Mode (FPM) DRAM

• NV2 - abandoned design based on quadratic surfaces
• NV3 - released in April 1997, named RIVA 128, NVIDIA's first native Direct3D-supporting design, 1 PSU, 1 TMU, 1 ROP, 128-bit memory bus, typical memory bandwidth of 1.6 GiB/s, up to 8 MiB of RAM, up to an 3D resolution of 960x720, PCI and AGP 1x, 2x, DirectX 5, OpenGL 1.0, 350 nm fabrication
• NV4 - released in 1998, named RIVA TNT, first NVIDIA dual pixel pipeline (TNT stands for TwiN Texel), 2 PSU, 2 TMU, 2 ROP, 128-bit memory bus, typical memory bandwidth of 1.7 GiB/s, up to 16 MiB of RAM, DirectX 6, OpenGL 1.1, 350 nm fabrication
• NV5 - released in 1999, named RIVA TNT2, featured AGP 4x support, up to 32 MiB of RAM, and higher clock speeds, 128-bit memory bus, typical memory bandwidth of 2.4 GiB/s, 150 MHz RAMDAC, 32-bit colour for 3D, support for 2048x2048 pixel textures, 250 nm fabrication
• NV6 - released in 1999, named Vanta or TNT2 M64, 64-bit memory bus, 250 and 220 nm fabrication
• NV10 - released in August 1999, named the GeForce 256 and the first GPU for the PC market to feature a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) implementation, 220 nm fabrication
• NV11 - 2000, 180 nm fabrication
• NV15 - released in April 2000, named GeForce2 and featured a dual texture processor per pipeline (4x2) design - typical memory bandwidth of 5.3 GiB/s, 1.6 Gigatexel fill rate, 25 Million triangles/s, 8 texels/clock cycle, OpenGL 1.2 compliant, 350 MHz RAMDAC, double, triple, and quad buffering, YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0, Z/stencil buffer, 180 and 150 nm fabrication
• NV16 - 2000, 180 nm fabrication
• NV17 - 2002, 150 nm fabrication
• NV18 - 2002, 150 nm fabrication
• NV18B - 2002, 150 nm fabrication
• NV20 - released in February 2001, named GeForce3, 180 and 150 nm fabrication
• NV25 - released in February 2002, named GeForce4 Ti, 150 nm fabrication
• NV28 - 2003, 150 nm fabrication
• NV30 - released in November 2002, named GeForce FX, 130 nm fabrication
• NV31 - 2003, 130 nm fabrication
• NV34 - 2003, 130 nm fabrication
• NV35 - 2003, 130 nm fabrication
• NV36 - 2003, 130 nm fabrication
• NV38 - 2003, 130 nm fabrication
• NV40 - released in April 2004, named GeForce6, 130 and 110 nm fabrication
• NV41 - 2005, 130 and 110 nm fabrication
• NV42 - 2005, 110 nm fabrication
• NV43 - 2005, 110 nm fabrication
• NV44 - 2005, 110 and 90 nm fabrication
• NV44A - 2005, 110 nm fabrication
• NV45 - 2004, 130 nm fabrication
• C51G - 2005, 110 nm fabrication
• C51PV - 2005, 90 nm fabrication
• C51PVG - 2005, 110 nm fabrication
• G70/NV47 - released in June 2005, named GeForce 7, 110 nm fabrication
• G71 - 2006, 90 nm fabrication
• G72 - 2006, 90 nm fabrication
• G73 - 2006, 90 nm fabrication
• G73-B1 - 2006, 80 nm fabrication
• C86PV - 2007, ? nm fabrication
• C86S - 2007, ? nm fabrication
• G80 - released in November 2006, named GeForce 8, 90 nm fabrication, 681 million transistors
• G84 - 2007, named GeForce 8, 80 nm fabrication, 289 million transistors
• G86 - 2007, named GeForce 8, 80 nm fabrication, 210 million transistors
• G92 - 2007, 65 nm fabrication, 754 million transistors
• G92a - 2008, 65 nm fabrication, 754 million transistors
• G92b - 2008, 55 nm fabrication, 754 million transistors
• G94a - 2008, 65 nm fabrication, 505 million transistors
• G94b - 2008, 55 nm fabrication, 505 million transistors
• G96a - 2008, 65 nm fabrication, 314 million transistors
• G96b - 2008, 55 nm fabrication, 314 million transistors
• G98 - 2007, 65 nm fabrication, ? million transistors
• G200 - 2008, 65 nm fabrication, 1400 million transistors
• G200b - 2008, 55 nm fabrication, 1400 million transistors
• G215 - 2008, 40 nm fabrication, 727 million transistors
• G216 - 2008, 40 nm fabrication, 486 million transistors
• G218 - 2008, 40 nm fabrication, 260 million transistors
• Fermi - 2010, 40 nm fabrication,

Quantum3D

Blah.

Rendition

Blah.

S3

Blah.

XGI

Blah.