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In the near future, game developers will be able to use the updated version DirectStorage Technology 1.1, which will allow you to decompress game resources using the GPU. This change should have a positive impact on game loading speeds. Microsoft says this is one of the most requested features among game developers.
Modern games contain a huge amount of resources, including characters, landscapes, and various objects, which are compressed to reduce the overall size of the game. Usually game archives are decompressed by means of the central processor, but this is not very efficient.
“Typically, the decompression process is done on the CPU, because compression formats have historically been optimized for CPUs only,” explains Cassie Hoef, senior program manager at Microsoft. “In DirectStorage 1.1, we offer an alternative method to move the decompression of these resources to the GPU. The release of DirectStorage 1.1 will open a new path for game developers to get the most out of their gaming hardware and make PC games load faster over the next few years.”
Microsoft says that DirectStorage 1.1 will support Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. However, keep in mind that Windows 11 has also optimized the I/O stack, so the technology will work best on this system.
Of course, for the feature to work, NVIDIA and AMD will need to release new DirectStorage 1.1 compatible driver versions.
