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Xbox Series X Tech Coming To PC and NVIDIA AMPERE RTX Cards

Vasto

Member
Direct Storage API is an essential part of Xbox Series X’s Velocity Architecture which not only reduces loading times in games but also allows to build bigger and richer worlds.

“…We’re excited to bring DirectStorage, an API in the DirectX family originally designed for the Velocity Architecture to Windows PCs! DirectStorage will bring best-in-class IO tech to both PC and console just as DirectX 12 Ultimate does with rendering tech. With a DirectStorage capable PC and a DirectStorage enabled game, you can look forward to vastly reduced load times and virtual worlds that are more expansive and detailed than ever….”



RTX-IO-1024x557.jpg
 

Krisprolls

Banned
If I understand correctly, DirectStorage used on XSX and Nvidia cards is an API, so it's software like Direct X.

PS5 solution is custom hardware though and hardware solutions are usually a lot faster than comparable software solutions.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
If I understand correctly, DirectStorage used on XSX and Nvidia cards is an API, so it's software like Direct X.

PS5 solution is custom hardware though and hardware solutions are usually a lot faster than comparable software solutions.
Accept XVA is not completely software. SFS has this(which is why the PC version is simply called "Sampler Feedback")
The first enhancement includes a hardware residency map feature comprising a low-resolution residency map that is paired with a much larger PRT, and both are provided to hardware at the same time. The residency map stores the mipmap level of detail resident for each rectangular region of the texture. PRT textures are currently difficult to sample given sparse residency. Software-only residency map solutions typically perform two fetches of two different buffers in the shader, namely the residency map and the actual texture map. The primary PRT texture sample is dependent on the results of a residency map sample. These solutions are effective, but require considerable implementation changes to shader and application code, especially to perform filtering the residency map in order to mask unsightly transitions between levels of detail, and may have undesirable performance characteristics. The improvements herein can streamline the concept of a residency map and move the residency map into a hardware implementation.
 
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If I understand correctly, DirectStorage used on XSX and Nvidia cards is an API, so it's software like Direct X.

PS5 solution is custom hardware though and hardware solutions are usually a lot faster than comparable software solutions.

DirectStorage is software & hardware; you can't support the API set if you don't have the hardware present to support it. The better the hardware, the better it can be supported.

DirectStorage is a part of XvA; XvA is hardware & software-based. Hardware i.e customizations to the GPU to support features of SFS like mip-blending. FWIW Sony's solution is also hardware & software; the I/O block means crap if the APIs and algorithms aren't present to leverage it.

Both systems have very custom I/O solutions, Sony's happens to have more brute strength to it. MS's is designed with scalability and stackability, and with deployment on consoles and PC to maximize R&D as well as streamline the dev pipeline across the two platforms (which helps with accelerating development time for 3rd parties).
 
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