DirectStorage (PC)

P

polonyc2

Fully [H]
Joined
Oct 25, 2004
Messages
25,842
Microsoft announced the imminent availability of DirectStorage 1.1, which is set to introduce the highly awaited GPU decompression feature to the API...while the first release of DirectStorage on PC focused on enhancing the data transfer so that the API could take advantage of the much higher bandwidth of NVMe drives, the decompression of assets was still handled by the CPU, becoming a bottleneck in the process

GPU decompression, on the other hand, can be much faster...in the comparison shown by Microsoft, the scene loads nearly three times faster, and the CPU is almost entirely freed up to handle other tasks if needed...the primary benefit of GPU Decompression is that PC gamers could see load times reduced by as much as 40% depending on the game and the PC hardware configuration

while there's a variety of decompression formats, DirectStorage 1.1 is set to add a brand new one called GDeflate, which was developed by Nvidia (GDeflate will work across all vendors thanks to dedicated drivers)...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-coming-soon/
 
Looks cool but game time loading has already been cut alot with flash based storage. Should be interesting. Win 11 only?
 
Yeah it is Win11 only. My understanding is games need to support it as well?
 
Vengance_01 said:
Win 11 only?
Click to expand...

deaedius said:
Yeah it is Win11 only. My understanding is games need to support it as well?
Click to expand...

Windows 10 will support DirectStorage, but with limited functionality

the first PC game implementing DirectStorage will be Forspoken (January 24th 2023)...while speaking about the API's implementation process at GDC 2022, developer Luminous Productions noted the need for GPU decompression, though it is presently unclear whether Forspoken will be updated to take advantage of DirectStorage 1.1
 
polonyc2 said:
Windows 10 will support DirectStorage, but with limited functionality

the first PC game implementing DirectStorage will be Forspoken (January 24th 2023)...while speaking about the API's implementation process at GDC 2022, developer Luminous Productions noted the need for GPU decompression, though it is presently unclear whether Forspoken will be updated to take advantage of DirectStorage 1.1
Click to expand...
Just so I am not mistaken, this new feature requires support in each game? And what about non-game programs, say Powerpoint or Photoshop, just for grins.
 
philb2 said:
Just so I am not mistaken, this new feature requires support in each game? And what about non-game programs, say Powerpoint or Photoshop, just for grins.
Click to expand...
I've read repeatedly that the feature has to be implemented in the application. It's not OS wide.
 
philb2 said:
Just so I am not mistaken, this new feature requires support in each game? And what about non-game programs, say Powerpoint or Photoshop, just for grins.
Click to expand...
OFaceSIG said:
I've read repeatedly that the feature has to be implemented in the application. It's not OS wide.
Click to expand...

I think some of it is system-wide if it's compatible, but most of it is application-dependent. GPU decompression I think can be implemented by the game or by the driver.

The higher-level Direct Storage stuff is absolutely game-dependent, stuff like frame caching. It's already in use on Playstation, and I've heard it's getting implemented on Xbox to a lesser extent.
 
WIth Direct Storage 1.1, with GDeflate available

the quick test provided by Microsoft seem to show, loaded 1,024 models, 2 texture each that fill a bit more than 4 gig of vram take on
regular
regular HDD:
With Gdeflate: 3.5-3.61s on the first time, 1.17-1.25 GB/s effective bandwidth when uncompresed
Without Gdeflate:3.66s, 2.4% CPU usage

sata ssd:
With Gdeflate: .2.7s, 1.59 GB/s effective bandwidth
Without Gdeflate:2.2s, 20% CPU usage

NVME (980 pro)
With Gdeflate: .38s, 11.4 GB effective bandwidth, 1.2% max cpu usage
Without Gdeflate: .9s, 4.9 GB effective bandwidth, 92-100% max cpu usage (24 thread)

The more than 6:1 compression ratio make the effective bandwith possible to be significantly higher that HDD effective max transfer speed.

From those test, it seem that a 12 core CPU was never close to be maxed with slower drive and using the GPU for decompression could save some CPU but not speed up things that much, result are a bit noisy specially when everything get into cache vs very first time.
 
Last edited:
the new Nvidia 526.98 drivers released today quietly adds support for RTX IO (as part of the Microsoft DirectStorage 1.1 release, though it also works on Vulkan API through two new extensions) and for HDR10+ displays...however, neither technology is currently supported in any games

RTX IO was first announced two years ago. It is now finally available with this Game Ready driver. The technology is open source and works on all platforms but is optimized for Ada architecture and, therefore, RTX 40 GPUs
 

Attachments

  • 1.png
    1.png
    121.4 KB · Views: 1
polonyc2 said:
RTX IO was first announced two years ago. It is now finally available with this Game Ready driver. The technology is open source and works on all platforms but is optimized for Ada architecture and, therefore, RTX 40 GPUs
Click to expand...
Not sure how "true" is that part, both the open source and all platforms one:

Cannot find it on Nvidia github page and:
https://developer.nvidia.com/rtxio-early-access
We will only select a few developers who are able to work closely with us on their I/O architectures, and are willing to support very early technology.
Note: You must be a registered NVIDIA developer in order to request access.

Gdeflate is:
https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvcomp
And can be used right now for GPU decompression since 1.1:
https://github.com/microsoft/DirectStorage/tree/main/Samples


And can work on all recent gpus and cpu without Cuda accelerating part which I can see it being slower without them, but I doubt that all there is to RTX-IO
 
With the increasing speed of non-volatile storage, stuff like this will also lower need for increasing amount of system RAM as time goes on?
 
westrock2000 said:
With the increasing speed of non-volatile storage, stuff like this will also lower need for increasing amount of system RAM as time goes on?
Click to expand...
Can see this being possible combined with larger and better cache all around, maybe the very slow growth in ram and VRAM trend usage will continue.

PS3 had 256mb of ram and 256 mb of VRAM, PS4 8gb of unified ram around 16x, PS5 had 16 gig of unified ram only twice has much, I could see a PS6 having only 32 gig of unified ram or 16 gig of VRAM+8-12 gig of regular ram, but with a 9-11 gig a second hard drive and a good hardware uncompressor that 2x-4x that effective bandwith in some scenario.
 
Last edited:
I will have a boot drive and then two game drives in the new pc I am building this week. Does anyone know if the boot drive also needs to support direct storage or is it only needed on the drives where the actual games are being played from?

I know the "game-optimized I/O+ firmware" is supposed to be rolling out soon to SSDs with the Phison E18 controller paired with Micron B47R NAND which is what my two 4TB Corsair MP600 Pro NH game drives use. My boot drive will be a Crucial P5 Plus though which uses a different controller.
 
Last edited:
Who owns the Optane tech currently? Whilst its obsolete in the PC realm, may work a treat as cache for consoles.
 
daglesj said:
Who owns the Optane tech currently? Whilst its obsolete in the PC realm, may work a treat as cache for consoles.
Click to expand...
What? Consoles already use fast NVMe drives. Intel still owns Optane I believe. They sold of their SSD division to SK Hynix.
 
daglesj said:
Who owns the Optane tech currently? Whilst its obsolete in the PC realm, may work a treat as cache for consoles.
Click to expand...
Optane is extremely not-obsolete by any normal standard of the term, but is dead - Intel still owns it and has effectively killed the product line. Too expensive, too small a benefit for most workloads, too little uptake.
 
polonyc2 said:
Windows 10 will support DirectStorage, but with limited functionality

the first PC game implementing DirectStorage will be Forspoken (January 24th 2023)...while speaking about the API's implementation process at GDC 2022, developer Luminous Productions noted the need for GPU decompression, though it is presently unclear whether Forspoken will be updated to take advantage of DirectStorage 1.1
Click to expand...
Looking at it post-release it seems however the game is using DirectStorage 1.1 is only supported on W11 so far, afaict. I wonder when we'll see a W10-supported title.
 
Okatis said:
Looking at it post-release it seems however the game is using DirectStorage 1.1 is only supported on W11 so far, afaict. I wonder when we'll see a W10-supported title.
Click to expand...

Forspoken doesn't seem to use GPU Decompression which is the biggest feature of DS 1.1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top