How does the unspecific date of DX10 effect future hardware?

bloodbob

Trollipop
Veteran
Okay microsoft made it clear they probably weren't going to release DX10 till longhorn came out and recently that got pushed back. How does this uncertain time frame for DX10 effect up coming hardware?? because when teams are working on chips such as the NV50 and R500 do they start implementing assumed features in DX10 or do they focus on DX9 features or do they just stall developement?
 
Planning/release of next-gen API and its supporting hardware are closely tied together. MS and IHVs are informed of each others' schedules.
 
They don't stall development, rather they go forward as best they can with the current information. You've got to pay the engineers so they might as well be working. They could "stall" development of a feature by delaying it to a later chip though.
 
I bet the next version of directx will contain all the features that make it into the next xbox hardware. So whatever design ATI showed Microsoft to win the contract.
 
I guess IHVs are gonna work even harder. The earlier your solution comes out, the better performance it provides, the bigger chance you have to convince MS to adopt your solution as the next-gen "standard". This is an easy and sometimes economic way to hurt your competitor, but it's risky as well.
 
I think it might be a good thing, because it gives several companies the time to do things the right way and not rush everything so they can avoid mistakes. Longhorn will require very high minimum specifications and Microsoft needs hardware that works exactly the way they expect it, not like today's situation...
 
Re: How does the unspecific date of DX10 effect future hardw

bloodbob said:
How does this uncertain time frame for DX10 effect up coming hardware??

It's already played a part in R400 being canned.

MuFu.
 
Humus said:
And don't forget that there's always OpenGL to work with while waiting.

Yeah good point there is alot lacking in GLSlang side of things and still PS3.0/VS3.0.

Just that Longhorn could be 2 years off or it could be like 4 years off do you invest your R&D in DX10 compentents now or do you stick with all your main developement in PS3.0 VS3.0 which can be done with only float pipelines.
 
Humus said:
And don't forget that there's always OpenGL to work with while waiting.

True, and they COULD pick up some DX10 slack, but at the moment they're rather slacking as it is... Where's 2.0 already? <grumbles>
 
I think that you'll find that the competition is so tight between ATI and NVIDIA neither company will be willing to expend a significant quantity of transistors (hence die space) on large scale features that will not be covered under the DirectX API - from a competitive stand point its far more important (just look at the market over the past 3 or 4 years) to meet the major API requirements, perhaps sprinkle a few fairly insignificant features as well, but concentrate the majority of transistors into improving performance.

As for DX10's release period, I don't think it will significantly effect development as long as there is a fairly good consensus of what is going in beforehand - you might find that a few more features will creep in their developments over time, and they may have to reconsider performance estimations as die space feasibilities may change in that time frame. You might also see that the current generation is pushed out for an extra cycle or so as well.
 
Back
Top