Hardware Accelerated
Graphics and Desktop
Composition
Kerry Hammil
Program Manager
Windows Client Platform
Microsoft Corporation
Agenda
The Desktop Composition Engine
Desktop Composition Demo
Scaling the Desktop for High Density
Displays
Hardware accelerated vector graphics,
images, 3D and and ClearType text
Longhorn graphics hardware
requirements
Longhorn User Experience
Longhorn will offer two distinct user experiences
Tier 1 Experience
Tier 2 Experience
New visuals, but akin to Windows XP in complexity
HW accelerated graphics for applications
High DPI scaling
Requires a minimal level of 3D HW support
Graphically stunning UI
Advanced composition services available to applications
Includes all features of the Tier 1 experience
Requires desktop composition and a powerful GPU
A Windows 2000 compatibility mode will also be
available for enterprises that desire this option
Windows Graphics Today
Desktop is single buffered
Windows must ask each application
to paint itself every frame
Most applications draw via GDI
Leads to tearing and flickering on the
Windows desktop
Powerful 3D hardware is underutilized
This model limits the graphical
richness of applications and the
Windows UI
Desktop Composition
What is it?
Each application renders to a back buffer
instead of directly onscreen
Windows composes the desktop on every
frame using these back buffers
Effects are applied to some windows
Transparency
3D Transforms
Visual effects like recoloring
Uses DirectX to render the desktop
Will run on the version of DirectX that is
included in Longhorn
Desktop Composition
Features
Improved visual quality of the desktop
Flicker free animation and video
Moving one window over another window
will not erase the bottom window!
Enable a world of new effects in the
Windows UI
Make these effects available to
application authors
Desktop Composition
demo
Delivering The Tier 2
Experience
In addition to visual richness, the Tier 2
experience must have several qualities:
Consistent
Scalable
Smooth
That means the hardware requirements must
leave some headroom
i.e.; the system must be able to gracefully handle
the launch of a new application even when several
applications are already running
Tier 2 User Experience
Hardware requirements
Tier 2 experience is available to desktops,
mobiles and Tablet PCs
The following requirements enable the Tier 2
user experience and desktop composition
Composition is resource intensive
Requirements fall into four categories
Graphics driver
GPU capabilities
Video memory
Video bus bandwidth
System memory bandwidth for UMA systems
Tier 2 User Experience
Graphics driver requirements
A Longhorn graphics driver is required
GPU scheduling
GPU memory management
Manages the GPU so that multiple clients
are guaranteed service
Ensures that the Desktop Composition
Engine can always get video memory
Hardware V-sync interrupt
Allows the compositor to synchronize its
drawing with the display
Tier 2 User Experience
GPU requirements
DX9-class GPU
Requires all of the capabilities of the
baseline GPU
Also requires:
Pixel Shader 2.0
2x2 full scene antialiasing
Bump and environment mapping with
luminance
Hardware transformations and lighting
Tier 2 User Experience
Video Memory
Memory and bandwidth requirements are
tied to resolution
Minimum configuration supports 1024x768
resolution and 32bpp color
Video memory
As resolution and color depth increase, so will
these requirements
Minimum: 64 MB
Recommended: 128 MB
For UMA systems, video memory
requirements indicate how much memory
the GPU must lock
Tier 2 User Experience
Video Bus Bandwidth
Bandwidth requirements include the cost of
composition and of rendering Windows UI content
Rendering UI content is expected to take about 80% of
required bandwidth
Minimum AGP 8x or PCI Express
Single Channel UMA configurations are not
supported
Dual Channel UMA configurations with DDR RAM
may be supported
UMA is constrained because memory bandwidth is
shared with the rest of the system
Decision will come by Longhorn Beta
Challenges
There are two major challenges that
we must work together to solve in
order to deliver the Tier 2 experience
in Longhorn
Power consumption
Stability
Power Consumption
Power consumption and heat dissipation are
concerns for mobile configurations
The type of work that is being done is more
important than whether or not we use the GPU
We are working with the Windows power team
to measure and optimize power consumption
User will have a choice between running the
compositor or turning it off to save battery life
If the compositor turns off, Windows must transition
to the base user experience
Stability
Graphics driver stability is a huge concern for
both the Tier 1 and Tier 2 user experiences
The Windows desktop will rely on the graphics
hardware far more than it does today
Tier 2 user experience will not run on an
unstable driver
HW acceleration and high DPI scaling will also
not run on an unstable driver
Call to action for graphics IHVs: work with us
to make really stable graphics drivers in
Longhorn
High DPI Display Support
Windows UI is difficult to use on
displays with DPI > 96
Many applications are authored assuming
a 96 dpi display
Some UI looks too small
Some UI is laid out incorrectly
Mouse input is difficult due to tiny UI
High DPI Display Support
Solving the problem
New Longhorn applications will be
authored in resolution-independent units
Content is rendered at the proper size for the
current display
Desktop Composition Engine can mitigate
the problem for legacy GDI apps
First, tell the application that its running on a
96 dpi monitor
Then scale the applications rendering to the
proper size as its displayed
High DPI Display Support
Availability
Scaling is available on any system that
runs Longhorn
Desktop Composition Engine provides
scaling on systems that meet the Tier 2 user
experience requirements
We can run a minimal version of the Desktop
Composition Engine in order to support
scaling on Tier 1 systems
The minimal DCE does not deliver any features
besides scaling, which reduces its hardware
requirements
The minimal DCE only supports the
Tier 1 user experience
Longhorn Graphics
The Longhorn Windows Client
platform contains a broad range
of graphics functionality
Hardware accelerated application
graphics is a primary feature of
the Longhorn platform
Longhorn Graphics
Overview
The Longhorn client platform includes a new
graphics library that replaces GDI and GDI+
Existing applications will still run, but GDI and
GDI+ will be in sustained engineering
This library builds on DirectX in order to
offer HW acceleration
2D vector graphics
3D graphics
Digital Imaging
ClearType text
Video
2D Vector Graphics
Primitives:
Brushes:
Solid, Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, Image Texture
Antialiasing
Shapes are rendered using the 3D hardware
Lines, Rectangles, Ellipses, Bezier Curves, Paths, etc.
Lines and curves are tessellated into triangle lists
Brushes are applied as textures to the triangles
Mesh Warp primitive
Can be applied to images and other 2D primitives
Can be used to generate custom gradient brushes
3D Graphics
3D functionality is unified with the rest of the
Windows graphics platform
Software fallback is available for 3D Longhorn
3D functionality
Basic 3D features
Consistent API model between 2D and 3D graphics
One set of hardware requirements for 2D and 3D HW
acceleration
Load and Display 3D models
Lighting
Texturing
Transforms
Platform features
Multimon
Terminal Server support
Digital Imaging
Basic operations:
Image filters:
Blit, rotate, scale, crop
Bilinear, bicubic, Fant
Improves the quality of stretched and
shrunk images
Image effects:
Recoloring, Gaussian blur, drop shadows
Useful for digital image processing and
artistic effects in UI
ClearType Text
Longhorn provides hardware
accelerated subpixel ClearType text to
new applications and to the Windows
user interface
Best visual quality and performance
of ClearType text is available on Tier 2
systems
Partial HW acceleration is available
on Tier 1 systems
Tier 1 User Experience
Requirements
These are the baseline requirements to
install Longhorn
Requirements fall into four categories
Longhorn graphics driver
GPU capabilities
Video memory
Video bus bandwidth
Longhorn requires either a Windows XP
or a Longhorn graphics driver to run
Tier 1 User Experience
GPU requirements
32bpp fullscreen render
target
32bpp textures
16 bit depth buffer
24 bit depth/8 bit stencil
buffer
At least 4 texture blend
stages
At least 2 simultaneous
textures
COLORWRITEENABLE
support
Conditional non-pow2
textures
Gouraud shading with
specular highlights and
alpha blending
Perspective maps
Mipmaps
Cube maps
Tier 1 User Experience
GPU recommendations
These recommendations enable better
performing and higher quality digital
imaging, video and 3D graphics on
Tier 1 systems
Bump and environment mapping with
luminance
Hardware transforms and lighting
2x2 full scene antialiasing
Pixel Shader 2.0 and
Vertex Shader 2.0 support
Tier 1 User Experience
Video Memory
Minimum requirement is 32 MB of
video memory
Longhorns minimum resolution is
1024x768 at 32bpp color depth
Very high resolutions will require
more than the minimum amount of
video memory
Tier 1 User Experience
Video Bus Bandwidth
Discrete GPUs
AGP 4x or PCI Express minimum
AGP 8x is recommended over AGP 4x
for video playback
UMA systems
System RAM should be DDR RAM to
provide sufficient bandwidth for high
DPI scaling
Both single and dual channel
configurations are supported
Summary
Graphics hardware requirements
Tier 1
Tier 2
Graphics
Driver
GPU
Video Memory
Longhorn
Longhorn
DX7-class
DX9-class
32 MB minimum
64 MB minimum
128 MB
recommended
Video Bus
Bandwidth
AGP 8x, PCI
Express or UMA
with DDR RAM
AGP 8x or PCI
Express
Possibly Dualchannel UMA
Call To Action
Review the Longhorn graphics
hardware requirements
Proposed graphics hardware
requirements for Tier 1 and Tier 2 are
included on the WinHEC CD
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