There have been rumors circulating that Microsoft might be releasing a new low-level API, but now they have all but confirmed that rumor with the creation of a new Twitter account and DirectX 12 webpage. While the webpage that they’ve hosted doesn’t really say much, there is a bit of information that tells you that there are four major hardware companies involved. Those companies, AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm are all GPU and CPU vendors and are all GPU vendors that have worked with Microsoft in the past. So, it only seems logical that they will work with Microsoft in the future.
On the Twitter account for DirectX 12, they also stated that, "Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated… #DirectX12 is coming to #GDC."
From the information we’ve been able to gather, DirectX 12 will likely be a new version of DirectX designed to be a much lower level API and to allow more direct hardware access, much like AMD’s mantle. In fact, it is believed that AMD’s push to create Mantle may have been one of the primary reasons why Microsoft is embarking on a DirectX 12. Considering that Mantle is a proprietary set of APIs, having DirectX 12 be a lower-level API could be beneficial for the whole industry and hopefully will accomplish similar goals that Mantle has. Considering that Microsoft is announcing it at GDC this year, we will likely not see DirectX 12 until Microsoft launched a new OS, Windows 9, next year.
We will be attending GDC 2014 in San Francisco this year and will be bringing you coverage of this and many other events and announcements straight from the show. Hopefully we’ll be able to get you more details about DirectX 12 between now and then, but until then, this is all we’ve got.
