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What Caused Microsoft to Create DirectX10?

It all started with the Windows Error Reporting Tool. Microsoft was collecting hundreds of Bugs per day only for its Operating System. Microsft Found out that 70% of all errors and bad user Experience in Windows XP comes from Graphic Display drivers. First, Microsft saw that most of the Drivers used are not certified (WHQL). Secondly, Microsoft also saw that due to the fact that the Graphic Driver runs in Kernel Mode, if it crashes, it brings the entire Operating System Down. So Microsoft said: “Heck! If we solve the only problem that is causing this 70% of bad experience, we would have got a very long way!”

Since they were developing Longhorn(Vista), and one of their top pritority was to bring any change that was possible, Microsoft told Graphic Card Manufactures that now their Display driver must run in User Mode rather than Kernel Mode. Microsoft also worked with Ati and nVidia in order to develop these WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model )Drivers.

While they worked with these specific Graphic Card Manufacturers, Microsoft quickly saw what their problems were in term of building a new Display Dirver Model. Extensive use of “Capability bits” in order to differentiate one Graphic Card to another in terms of features and the overheads in rendering objects. So microsft decided to take out a new version of DirectX 10. In fact they were already going to take a new version out, with the Pixel Shader Version 4.0 the Top newest Feature, but they just added some features which allowed them more control over the Graphic Cards.

The change with WDDM is that now, the Operating System(DirectX 10) is more in control of the Graphic driver than the Driver of the Manufacturer was ever before. What this means, that Microsft is more in control of what the Graphic cards will do, how they must behave, in fact, now with DirectX 10 , it is Microsft and not the Graphic Cards Manufacturers that decide what features will be included in Graphic cards.

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As observed, the Vista-era graphics overhaul was driven by stability concerns—but there was more to it than just fewer crashes. Microsoft reworked the OS-level driver model and the Direct3D API together so the platform could (a) tolerate and recover from faulty graphics code, (b) present a predictable, common hardware baseline to game developers instead of many per-card “cap bits,” and (c) expose modern GPU features in a cleaner, lower-overhead way. These goals were implemented in the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) and the redesigned Direct3D 10 API. (learn.microsoft.com)

The API-level changes reflect those objectives. Direct3D 10 introduced a unified shader/core model, a geometry-shader stage and stream-output for GPU-driven geometry, constant buffers and immutable state objects to cut CPU/API overhead, and more consistent resource views and formats. By moving from many optional capability flags to a stricter minimum feature set, application code became simpler and drivers could be thinner and more optimizable—a tradeoff that favored predictability and performance over legacy compatibility. (learn.microsoft.com)

There were practical tradeoffs. D3D10’s new DDI required the new driver model and shipped with Windows Vista, so adoption lagged (many titles kept Direct3D 9 fallbacks) and the initial transition exposed driver-quality issues as vendors adapted. Over time the design paid off: Direct3D evolved (10.1, 11, feature levels) and WDDM continued to add GPU scheduling, memory virtualization, and recovery features. For technical detail and the official design notes, see the Direct3D 10 documentation and the WDDM overview. (learn.microsoft.com)

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The ATI R800 will support DirectX 10

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