Now, developers have a better solution. NVIDIA collaborated with Microsoft and IHV partners to develop GDeflate for DirectStorage 1.1, an open standard for GPU compression. The current Game Ready Driver (version 526.47) contains NVIDIA RTX IO technology, including optimizations for GDeflate. GDeflate: An Open GPU Compression Standard Set aside some R&D time after the release for understanding and experimenting with GPU decompression.

To put this in perspective, at this rate, it is possible to fill the entire 24 GBs of frame buffer memory on the high-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU in a little over 3 seconds!

Rather than thinking in terms of compressing files, it is better to think about compressing streams. For this reason, the DirectStorage SDK does not ship with a standalone tool for compressing files. Instances of the IDStorageCompressionCodec interface can be used for this. Use DStorageCreateCompressionCodec with DSTORAGE_COMPRESSION_FORMAT_GDEFLATE to obtain an instance of the GDeflate codec. This can be used to compress (and decompress) streams. See the MiniArchive project in the BulkLoadDemo sample for an example of this in action. Compressing Assets on non-Windows platforms A: DangerZone appears to generate most of their geometry on the fly a la Minecraft. While this is impressive, certainly, it isn't at all comparable to loading data from the disk. CPUs (even Intel Core 2 Duos) can spin out meshes faster than even most SSDs can, let alone hard disks. When DirectStorage performs GDeflate decompression on the CPU it uses its built-in decompression system. This uses a Windows threadpool to support multi-threaded CPU decompression. The NumBuiltInCpuDecompressionThreads field in DSTORAGE_CONFIGURATION can be used to control how many threads are assigned to this.

Rolling this decompression work out across the EIS will allow everyone to process the Olympic and Paralympic Games, something our staff have worked towards and contributed to during this unique cycle, whilst tying into our values of We Care and We Collaborate. Knowledge of how GDeflate works can inform decisions about appropriate stream sizes. First, GDeflate splits the uncompressed stream into 64 KiB-sized tiles. Each tile is compressed separately. This provides the first level of parallelism – for CPU decompression, each tile can be decompressed by a different thread, and for GPU decompression, each tile can be decompressed by a single thread group. For the second level of parallelism, GDeflate arranges the data within a tile so that multiple lanes within a thread group can work in parallel on decompressing that tile. When we set out to design the Xbox Series X, we aspired to build our most powerful console ever powered by next generation innovation and delivering consistent, sustained performance never before seen in a console with no compromises. To achieve this goal, we knew we needed to analyze each component of the system, to push beyond the limitations in traditional console performance and design. It was critical in the design of the Xbox Series X to ensure we had a superior balance of power, speed and performance while ensuring no component would constrain the creative ambition of the world’s best creators, empowering them to deliver truly transformative next gen gaming experiences not possible in prior console generations. GPU decompression is supported on all DirectX 12 + Shader Model 6.0 GPUs. However, one of the benefits of DirectStorage 1.1 is that GPU hardware vendors can provide additional optimizations for their hardware, called metacommands. For more information about support for these metacommands from our partners, see the links below. As always, we recommend updating to the latest drivers for your gaming hardware for the best performance.benefit to this is that you no longer have lots of assets taking up memory while just sitting their waiting to be used, which in turn can potentially reduce the amount of VRAM required by the game. Also, 64 KB happens to be the standard tile size for tiled or sparse resources in graphics APIs (DirectX and Vulkan), which makes GDeflate compatible with future on-demand streaming architectures leveraging these API features. High-performance systems have long embraced large-scale data parallelism to continue scaling performance for many applications. On the other hand, parallelizing the traditional data compression algorithms has been challenging, due to fundamental serial assumptions “baked” into their design.

Start as early in the development process as possible to avoid needing to drastically reconfigure existing workloads. Several factors affect game performance when it comes to compression/decompression. Here’s a breakdown of what works and what’s recommended: Hardware vendors may begin releasing drivers for DirectStorage 1.1 in the weeks before our release. Drivers from our key partners ensure that developers will see the full potential of GPU decompression. “DirectStorage 1.1 with GPU decompression will enable developers to unleash their creativity, delivering more detailed and visually stunning worlds,” said Scott Herkelman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit at AMD. “We have worked closely with Microsoft to ensure the best possible experience on AMD devices and platforms.” Achieving maximum end-to-end throughput with DirectStorage with GPU decompression requires enqueuing a sufficient number of read requests, to keep the pipeline fully saturated. GDeflate is available as a standard GPU decompression option in DirectStorage 1.1—a modern I/O streaming API from Microsoft. We’re looking forward to next-generation game engines benefiting from GDeflate by dramatically reducing loading times. Resource streaming and data compressionWhen released, we will provide an update to the DirectStorage SDK that provides everything developers need to get started with GPU decompression. Included with the SDK will be: For those who compete, coach or form the vital support teams around athletes, the Olympic and Paralympic journey is full of emotion, from elation to disappointment and everything in between. Each Games is unique and the postponement of Tokyo 2020, the on-going pandemic and the COVID safe measures at the Games, are just some of the additional factors that will contribute to the waves of emotion that all involved are likely to go through. Custom NVME SSD: The foundation of the Xbox Velocity Architecture is our custom, 1TB NVME SSD, delivering 2.4 GB/s of raw I/O throughput, more than 40x the throughput of Xbox One. Traditional SSDs used in PCs often reduce performance as thermals increase or while performing drive maintenance. The custom NVME SSD in Xbox Series X is designed for consistent, sustained performance as opposed to peak performance. Developers have a guaranteed level of I/O performance at all times and they can reliably design and optimize their games removing the barriers and constraints they have to work around today. This same level of consistent, sustained performance also applies to the Seagate Expandable Storage Card ensuring you have the exact same gameplay experience regardless of where the game resides.