Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) is a software rasterizer and a component of

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graphics runtime in

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and later. It is available for

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and

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through platform update for Windows Vista. WARP can be used when no compatible hardware is available, in

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applications or in a headless environment, or for remote rendering of

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for

Remote Desktop Connection Remote Desktop Services (RDS), known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and earlier, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allow a user to initiate and control an interactive session on a remote computer or virtual machine ...

clients. WARP is a full-featured

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10.1 renderer device with performance on par with current low-end

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...

s, such as Intel GMA 3000, when running on multi-core CPUs. To achieve this level of rendering performance, WARP employs advanced techniques such as

just-in-time compilation In computing, just-in-time (JIT) compilation (also dynamic translation or run-time compilations) is a way of executing computer code that involves compilation during execution of a program (at run time) rather than before execution. This may cons ...

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and support for advanced vector extensions such as

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and

SSE4.1 SSE4 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 4) is a SIMD CPU instruction set used in the Intel Core microarchitecture and AMD K10 (K8L). It was announced on September 27, 2006, at the Fall 2006 Intel Developer Forum, with vague details in a white paper; mor ...

. WARP supports

Direct3D 11 Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware a ...

runtime and is compatible with feature levels 10_1, 10_0, 9_3, 9_2, and 9_1; in

Direct3D 11.1 Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render 3D computer graphics, three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Dir ...

runtime, WARP additionally supports feature levels 11_0 and 11_1. In Windows 8, WARP provides functionality for the "Microsoft Basic Render Driver" which replaces kernel-mode

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can no ...

driver. In Windows 8.1, WARP has been updated to support feature level 11_1 and tiled resources. In Windows 10, WARP has been updated to support

Direct3D 12 Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware a ...

at feature level 12_1; under Direct3D 12, WARP also replaces the Reference rasterizer.

References

External links

MSDN - Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) Guide
DirectX Windows 7 {{windows-stub