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Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM, initially LDDM as Longhorn Display Driver Model and then WVDDM in times of Windows Vista) is the
graphic driver Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufact ...
architecture for
video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...
drivers running
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
versions beginning with
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
. It is a replacement for the previous
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
and
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
display driver model XDDM/XPDM and is aimed at enabling better performance graphics and new graphics functionality and stability.
Display driver In electronics/computer hardware, a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a micr ...
s in Windows Vista and
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
can choose to either adhere to WDDM or to XDDM. With the removal of XDDM from
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
, however, WDDM became the only option. WDDM provides the functionality required to render the desktop and applications using
Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE in builds of pre-reset Windows Longhorn) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render ...
, a
compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing ...
window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...
running on top of
Direct3D 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 ...
. It also supports new DXGI interfaces required for basic device management and creation. The WDDM specification requires at least Direct3D 9-capable video card and the display driver must implement the device driver interfaces for the Direct3D 9Ex runtime in order to run legacy Direct3D applications; it may optionally implement runtime interfaces for Direct3D 10 and higher.


Features enabled by the WDDM

WDDM drivers enable areas of functionality which were not uniformly provided by earlier display driver models. These include:


Virtualized video memory

In the context of graphics, virtualization means that individual processes (in
user mode A modern computer operating system usually uses virtual memory to provide separate address spaces or regions of a single address space, called user space and kernel space. This separation primarily provides memory protection and hardware prote ...
) cannot see the memory of adjacent processes even by means of insertion of forged commands in the command stream. WDDM drivers allow video memory to be virtualized, and video data to be paged out of video memory into system RAM. In case the video memory available turns out to be insufficient to store all the video data and textures, currently unused data is moved out to system RAM or to the disk. When the swapped out data is needed, it is fetched back. Virtualization could be supported on previous driver models (such as the XP Driver Model) to some extent, but was the responsibility of the driver, instead of being handled at the runtime level.


Scheduling

The runtime handles scheduling of concurrent graphics contexts. Each list of commands is put in a queue for execution by the GPU, and it can be preempted by the runtime if a more critical task arrives and if it has not begun execution. This differs from native threads on the CPU where one task cannot be interrupted and therefore can take longer than necessary and make the computer appear less responsive. A hybrid scheduling algorithm between native and light threads with cooperation between the threads would achieve seamless parallelism. It is important to note that scheduling is not a new concept but it was previously the responsibility of individual driver developers. WDDM attempts to unify the experience across different vendors by controlling the execution of GPU tasks.


Cross-process sharing of Direct3D surfaces

A
Direct3D 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 ...
graphics surface is the memory area that contains information about the textured
mesh Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus of index terms that facilitates searching. Created and updated by th ...
es used for rendering a 2D or 3D scene. WDDM allows Direct3D surfaces to be shared across processes. Thus, an application can incorporate a mesh created by another application into the scene it is rendering. Sharing textures between processes before WDDM was difficult, as it would have required copying the data from video memory to system memory and then back to video memory for the new device.


Enhanced fault-tolerance

If a WDDM driver hangs or encounters a fault, the graphics stack will restart the driver. A graphics hardware fault will be intercepted and if necessary the driver will be reset. Drivers under Windows XP were free to deal with hardware faults as they saw fit either by reporting it to the user or by attempting to recover silently. In some cases when the display driver can be safely stopped, Windows XP may instead alert about the display driver crash, while also disabling the video driver, thus switching down the screen resolution to 640x480 with only 16 colors. With a WDDM driver, the screen resolution will most likely be unaffected; all hardware faults cause the driver to be reset and the user will be notified by a popup; this unifies the behavior across vendors. Previous drivers were fully implemented in kernel mode, whereas WDDM is implemented partly in user mode. If the user mode area fails with an unrecoverable error, it will, at the most, cause the application to quit unexpectedly instead of producing a blue screen error as it would in previous driver models. WDDM also allows the graphics hardware to be reset and users to update drivers without requiring a reboot.


Limitations

The new driver model requires the graphics hardware to have Shader Model 2.0 support at least, since the fixed function pipeline is now translated to 2.0
shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene—a process known as '' shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of s ...
s. However, according to Microsoft as of 2009, only about 1–2 percent of the hardware running Windows Vista used the XDDM, with the rest already WDDM capable. It also requires some other hardware features; consequently some SM 2.0-supporting hardware such as the
Intel GMA The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) is a series of integrated graphics processors introduced in 2004 by Intel, replacing the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics series and being succeeded by the Intel HD and Iris Graphics series. This serie ...
900 fails the WDDM certification. One of the limitations of WDDM driver model version 1.0 is that it does not support multiple drivers in a multi-adapter, multi-monitor setup. If a multi-monitor system has more than one graphics adapter powering the monitors, both the adaptors must use the same WDDM driver. If more than one driver is used, Windows will disable one of them. WDDM 1.1 does not have this limitation. WDDM 1.0/1.1 does not allow some modes that were previously handled by the driver such as spanning mode (stretching the desktop across two monitors) although ''Dual View'' is still available.


Need for a new display driver model

One of the chief scenarios that the Windows Display Driver Model enables is the
Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE in builds of pre-reset Windows Longhorn) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render ...
. Since the desktop and application windows managed by DWM are Direct3D applications, the number of open windows directly affects the amount of video memory required. Because there is no limit on the number of open windows, the video memory available may prove insufficient, necessitating virtualization. As the window contents that DWM composes into the final desktop are generated by different processes, cross-process surface sharing is necessary. Also, because there can be other DirectX applications running alongside DWM on the DWM-managed desktop, they must be able to access the GPU in a shared manner, necessitating scheduling. Though this is true for Microsoft's implementation of a composited desktop under Windows Vista, on the other hand, a composited desktop need not theoretically require a new display driver model to work as expected. Successful implementations of composited desktops were done before Windows Vista on other platforms such as
Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...
,
Compiz Compiz () is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as loa ...
, WindowFX. The approach that Microsoft attempted was to try to make sure WDDM was a unified experience across different GPUs from multiple vendors by standardizing their features and performance. The software features missing from other driver models could be made immaterial by extensions or if a less restrictive or simply different driver model were in place.


History


WDDM 1.0

Windows Vista introduced WDDM 1.0 as a new display driver architecture designed to be better performing, more reliable, and support new technologies including
HDCP High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. Types of connections include DisplayPort ...
. Hybrid Sleep, which combines
hibernation Hibernation is a state of minimal activity and metabolic reduction entered by some animal species. Hibernation is a seasonal heterothermy characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and heart-rate, and low metabolic rate. It is mos ...
and
sleep mode Sleep mode (or suspend to RAM) is a low power mode for electronic devices such as computers, televisions, and remote controlled devices. These modes save significantly on electrical consumption compared to leaving a device fully on and, upon resu ...
functionality for enhanced stability in the event of power failure, also requires WDDM.


WDDM 1.1

Windows 7 supports major additions to WDDM known as WDDM 1.1; the details of this new version were unveiled at WinHEC 2008. New features include: * DXGI 1.1, which features return of hardware 2D acceleration for use by
GDI GDI may refer to: Science and technology * Gasoline direct injection, a type of fuel injection * Graphics Device Interface, a component of Microsoft Windows * Guanosine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor, a protein Organisations * Gabriel Dumont I ...
(but not GDI+) and
Direct2D Direct2D is a 2D vector graphics application programming interface (API) designed by Microsoft and implemented in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (with Platform Update ...
/
DirectWrite DirectWrite is a text layout and glyph rendering API by Microsoft. It was designed to replace GDI/GDI+ and Uniscribe for screen-oriented rendering and was first shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as Windows Vista and Wi ...
** BitBlt, StretchBlt, TransparentBlt ** AlphaBlend, ColorFill **
ClearType ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...
font support * GPU switching without logoff or reboot * Direct3D 11
device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...
interface (DDI) *
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...
installable client driver (ICD) * DXVA-HD DDI * Hardware video overlay DDI * Optional AES 128 encryption * Optional decoding of encrypted video content * Support multiple drivers in a multi-adapter and multi-monitor setup Hardware acceleration of GDI and Direct2D/DirectWrite operations helps reduce
memory footprint Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running. The word footprint generally refers to the extent of physical dimensions that an object occupies, giving a sense of its size. In computing, t ...
in Windows 7, because DWM compositing engine no longer needs to keep a system memory copy of all surfaces used by GDI/GDI+, as in Windows Vista. DXGI 1.1, Direct3D 11, Direct2D, and DirectWrite were made available with
Windows Vista Platform Update Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
; however GDI/GDI+ in Vista continues to rely on software rendering and the
Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE in builds of pre-reset Windows Longhorn) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render ...
continues to use Direct3D 9Ex. WDDM 1.1 drivers are backward compatible with WDDM 1.0 specification; both 1.0 and 1.1 drivers can be used in Windows Vista with or without the Platform Update.


WDDM 1.2

Windows 8 includes WDDM 1.2 and DXGI 1.2. New features were first previewed at the Build 2011 conference and include performance improvements as well as support for
stereoscopic 3D Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...
rendering and video playback. Other major features include
preemptive multitasking In computing, preemption is the act performed by an external scheduler — without assistance or cooperation from the task — of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This preemptive sc ...
of the GPU with finer
granularity Granularity (also called graininess) is the degree to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces, "granules" or "grains" (metaphorically). It can either refer to the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided, or the ...
(DMA buffer, primitive, triangle, pixel, or instruction-level), reduced memory footprint, improved resource sharing, and faster timeout detection and recovery. 16-bit color surface formats (565, 5551, 4444) are mandatory in Windows 8, and Direct3D 11 Video supports YUV 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:2:0/4:1:1 video formats with 8, 10, and 16-bit precision, as well as 4 and 8-bit palettized formats. WDDM 1.2 supports display-only and render-only WDDM drivers, such as ''Microsoft Basic Display Driver'' and WARP-based ''Microsoft Basic Render Driver'' which replaced kernel-mode VGA driver. WDDM 1.0/1.1 only allows rudimentary task scheduling using "batch queue" granularity; improvements to multitasking, as well as fast context switching and support for
virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...
, were initially expected in versions tentatively named WDDM 2.0 and WDDM 2.1, which were announced at WinHEC 2006.


WDDM 1.3

Windows 8.1 includes WDDM 1.3 and DXGI 1.3. New additions include the ability to trim DXGI adapter memory usage, multi-plane overlays, overlapping swap chains and swap chain scaling, select backbuffer subregion for swap chain and lower-latency swap chain presentation. Driver feature additions include wireless displays (
Miracast Miracast is a Wireless, wireless communications standard created by the Wi-Fi Alliance which is designed to transmit video and sound from devices (such as laptops or smartphones) to display receivers (such as TVs, monitors, or projectors). It uses ...
), YUV format ranges, cross-adapter resources and GPU engine enumeration capabilities. Graphics kernel performance improvement


WDDM 2.0

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
includes WDDM 2.0, which is designed to dramatically reduce workload on the kernel-mode driver for GPUs that support virtual memory addressing, to allow multithreading parallelism in the user-mode driver and result in lower CPU utilization. Windows 10 also includes DXGI 1.4. Direct3D 12 API, announced at Build 2014, requires WDDM 2.0. The new API will do away with automatic resource-management and pipeline-management tasks and allow developers to take full low-level control of adapter memory and rendering states. The display driver model from Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone have converged into a unified model for Windows 10. A new memory model is implemented that gives each GPU a per-process virtual address space, this enabled GPU virtual memory in WDDM 2.0. Direct addressing of video memory is still supported by WDDMv2 for graphics hardware that requires it, but that is considered a legacy case. IHVs are expected to develop new hardware that supports virtual addressing. Significant changes have been made to the DDI to enable this new memory model.


WDDM 2.1

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) includes WDDM 2.1, which supports Shader Model 6.0 (mandatory for feature levels 12_0 and 12_1), and DXGI 1.5 which supports
HDR10 HDR10 Media Profile, more commonly known as 'HDR10'', is an open high-dynamic-range video (HDR) standard announced on 27 August 2015, by the Consumer Electronics Association. It is the most widespread HDR format. HDR10 is not Backward compatibil ...
- a 10-bit high dynamic range, wide gamut format defined by ITU-T Rec. 2100/ Rec.2020 - and variable refresh rates.


WDDM 2.2

Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703) includes WDDM 2.2, which is tailored for virtual, augmented and
mixed reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...
with stereoscopic rendering for the Windows Mixed Reality platform, and DXGI 1.6.


WDDM 2.3

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) includes WDDM 2.3. The following is a list of new features for Windows Display driver development in Windows 10, version 1709: * Shader Model 6.1, adding support view instancing and barycentric semantics. *Display ColorSpace Transform DDIs provide additional control over color space transforms applied in the post-composition display pipeline. *The D3D12 Copy Queue Timestamp Queries feature will allow applications to issue timestamp queries on COPY command lists/queues. These timestamps are specified to function identically to timestamps on other engines. *Enhanced Video integration into Direct3D12 Runtime through: hardware accelerated video decoding, content protection and video processing


WDDM 2.4

Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803) includes WDDM 2.4. Updates to display driver development in Windows 10 version 1803 include the following features.: * Shader Model 6.2, adding support for 16-bit scalars and the ability to select the behaviours with denormal values. * Indirect Display UMDF class extension, the driver can pass the SRM to the rendering GPU and have a mechanism to query the SRM version being used. * IOMMU hardware-based GPU isolation support, increasing security by restricting GPU access to system memory. * GPU paravirtualization support, enabling display drivers to provide rendering capabilities to Hyper-V virtualized environments. * Brightness, a new interface to support multiple displays that can be set to calibrated nit-based brightness levels. * D3D11 bitstream encryption, exposing CENC, CENS, CBC1, and CBCS with 8 or 16 byte initialization vectors. * D3D11 and D3D12 video decode histogram, allowing to leverage fixed function hardware for histogram to improve tone mapping quality for HDR/EDR scenarios. * D3D12 video decode now supports Decode Tier II, enabling applications to amortize allocation cost and reduce peak memory usage during resolution change. * Tiled resource tier and LDA atomics, a new cross node sharing tier to add support for atomic shader instructions working across linked adapter (LDA) nodes, allowing to implement multiple GPU rendering techniques like split frame rendering (SFR). * GPU dithering support, allowing the operating system to explicitly request dithering in scenarios where a higher effective bit depth is needed than is physically available on the monitor link, for example for HDR10 over HDMI 2.0. * Post-processing color enhancement override, allowing the operating system to request that the driver temporarily disable any post-processing that enhances or alters display colors, for specific application scenarios to enforce colorimetrically accurate color behavior on the display, and safely coexist with OEM or IHV-proprietary display color enhancements. * Direct3D12 and Video, new API and DDI to provide access to hardware accelerated video decoding, content protection and video processing. * DisplayID, a new DDI, designed to allow the VESA's DisplayID descriptor to be queried from a display controlled by a graphics adapter. * GPU performance data, an extension to expose information about the GPU hardware such as temperature, fan speed, clock speeds for engines and memory, memory bandwidth, power draw, and voltages. * SupportContextlessPresent, a driver cap to help IHVs onboard new driver. * Improvements to External/Removable GPU support in the OS, providing better support to ''detachable'' GPUs. * Display Diagnostics, with Kernel mode device driver interface changes to allow the driver for a display controller to report diagnostic events to the operating system. * Shared graphics power components, allowing non-graphics drivers to participate in the power management of a graphics device. * Shared texture improvements, increasing the types of textures that can be shared across processes and Direct3D devices, adding support to monochrome with minimal memory copying.


WDDM 2.5

Windows 10 October 2018 Update (Version 1809) Includes WDDM 2.5. Updates to Display driver development in Windows 10, version 1809 include the following features: * Shader Model 6.3, adding support for DirectX12 Raytracing (DXR). * Raytracing, in order to support hardware-accelerated raytracing in Direct3D 12. * Universal Driver Requirements, drivers will need to ensure their DirectX 11 and DirectX12 user-mode drivers and kernel mode drivers, as well other DLL loaded by these components, adhere to the Universal API. * SRV-Only Tiled Resource Tier 3, a new capability bit for tiled resources, exposing sparse volume textures without requiring unordered-access and render-target operations support. * Render Pass, introducing render pass concept in Direct3D 12, adding new APIs to be run on existing drivers and allow user mode drivers to choose optimal rendering path without heavy CPU penalty. * Meta-commands, adding preview support for DirectML, a high-performance, hardware-accelerated DirectX 12 library for machine learning. With Windows 10 version 1903 and newer meta-commands and DirectML are a stable part of Windows. * HDR Brightness Compensation, a new SDR brightness boost, raising the reference white of SDR content to the user-desired value, allowing SDR content to be reproduced to a typical 200-240 nits. It also allows reporting if the hardware/driver supports HDR output through FP16 pixel format or only ARGB10 pixel format. * SDR White Level, to let the graphics drivers know the ''SDR white level'' value that is being applied by the OS compositor for all the SDR content, for a display which is running in HDR mode. * Display Synchronization, allowing the operating system to check for display synchronization capabilities if the display is exposed by the driver and prior to enabling the display. * Tracked Workloads was also added as an experimental feature to better control the trade-off between quicker processor execution and lower power consumption, but was removed from Windows 10 version 2004 and deprecated from earlier OS versions as part of a security fix.


WDDM 2.6

Windows 10 May 2019 Update (Version 1903) includes WDDM 2.6. Updates to display driver development in Windows 10 version 1903 include the following features: * Shader Model 6.4, adding support low-precision packed dot product intrinsics and for library sub-objects to simplify ray-tracing. *Super Wet Ink, allowing the creation of textures in formats and modes the IHVs doesn't natively support, resolving them as a resource projection to a format the hardware/drivers natively support, allowing internal drivers optimizations. * Variable Rate Shading, also known as ''coarse pixel shading'', a mechanism to enable allocation of rendering performance/power at varying rates across rendered images. It comes with two tiers (tier 1 and tier 2). * Collect Diagnostic Info, allowing the operating system to collect a private data from drivers for both rendering and display functions. This new feature is a requirement in WDDM 2.6. * Background Processing, allowing user mode drivers to express desired threading behavior, and the runtime to control/monitor it. APIs allow apps to adjust what amount of background processing is appropriate for their workloads and when to perform that work. * Driver Hot Update, reducing server downtime and allowing driver security hot patch to the kernel mode driver. * Microsoft Compute Driver Model (MCDM), for AI processors such as NPU.


WDDM 2.7

Windows 10 May 2020 Update (Version 2004) includes WDDM 2.7. Updates to display driver development in Windows 10 version 2004 include the following features: *Shader Model 6.5, adding support to the new pipeline capabilities as well additional Wave intrinsics. *Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling: masked as an additional option in the system settings, when enabled offloads high-frequency tasks to a dedicated GPU-based scheduling processor, reducing CPU scheduling overhead. Requires ad-hoc hardware and driver support. *Sampler Feedback, allowing a finer tune of the resources usage in a scene. It comes with two tiers (tier 0.9 and tier 1.0). *DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Tier 1.1, introducing inline ray-tracing, indirect rays dispatching, increasing the state object without the need to create a new one, and additional vertex formats for acceleration structures. *Mesh and Amplification Shaders Stages, a new optional geometry pipeline replacing the traditional pipeline (Input Assembler-Vertex-Hull-Tesselator-Domain-Geometry and Stream Output stages). *Improved memory allocation control, with better residency control and the possibility to not explicitly zeroing newly created heaps. *Direct3D 9 resource interop, allowing projecting a Direct3D 9 resource on a Direct3D 12 application. *Direct3D 12 Video Protected Resource support, allowing play protected content in a Direct3D 12 application.


WDDM 2.8

Windows 10 Insider Preview Manganese included WDDM 2.8, but no driver was ever publicly demonstrated to support it and it has been skipped for "Iron" and "Cobalt" development releases.


WDDM 2.9

WDDM 2.9 in Windows 10 Insider Preview "Iron" will bring support for GPU hardware acceleration to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) and support for feature level 12_2 and HLSL Shader Model 6.6.


WDDM 3.0

Windows 11 RTM Final Retail release includes WDDM 3.0, which improves graphics architecture in Windows Subsystem for Linux adding: * User mode driver compiled for Linux in the WSL package. * Host driver mounted in Linux * Dynamic refresh rate * Direct3D 12 video encoding * Hardware flip queue


WDDM 3.1

Windows 11 2022 Update (version 22H2) includes WDDM 3.1. *Shader Model 6.7 * IOMMU DMA remapping * Sharing the backing store with KMD


WDDM 3.2

Windows 11 2024 Update (version 24H2) includes WDDM 3.2. *Shader Model 6.8 *Dirty bit tracking *Live migration on GPU-P devices *Native GPU fence objects *User-mode work submission *D3D12 AV1 video encoding *Work graphs


References

{{Windows Components Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Device drivers Windows Vista