PC DirectX DirectStorage Plans

A

post on the DirectX Developer Blog

discusses DirectStorage, a new feature
coming to NVMe SSD-equipped Windows PCs to “introduce a new era of no-compromise
gameplay” (thanks Simon). They explain further: “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.” They
say that they are currently working with industry partners to finish designing
the API and they hope to distribute a development preview of DirectStorage to
game developers next year. They offer some technical details on how this will
work and the following overview:

Unfortunately, current storage APIs were
not optimized for this high number of IO requests, preventing them from scaling
up to these higher NVMe bandwidths creating bottlenecks that limit what games
can do. Even with super-fast PC hardware and an NVMe drive, games using the
existing APIs will be unable to fully saturate the IO pipeline leaving precious
bandwidth on the table.

That’s where DirectStorage for PC comes in. This API is the response to an
evolving storage and IO landscape in PC gaming. DirectStorage will be supported
on certain systems with NVMe drives and work to bring your gaming experience to
the next level. If your system doesn’t support DirectStorage, don’t fret; games
will continue to work just as well as they always have.