Windows 7 System detailed core graphics architecture

As you now think, Windows7 is actually an improved version of Windows Vista. Windows 7 has done a lot of work on the basis of Windows Vista and has added a lot of new features. Vista offers a great deal of improvement over its previous generation of XP, but on the one hand these improvements are too great for users and even the software vendors (such as DirectX 10 app developers) to be completely accepted, on the other hand, Vista is not as good as it might be, due to the imperfect nature of the feature. In Windows 7, including the operating system itself, software vendors, and users are already ready, so the response is better than Vista is not difficult to understand.

The graphical interface has always been at the heart of the Windows system, and since Ghost XP, Windows has started to offer a graphical desktop graphical interface as headlines, not only because Vista and 7 of the desktop itself is a 3D application, but because Vista and 7 can better play the role of graphics acceleration hardware. From Windows Vista to Windows7, the operating system is increasingly integrated with the GPU.

While it is often possible to hear Windows7 's big update on a DirectX 11.0 API, DirectX is also important for the graphics architecture of Windows systems, but that's not all. A graphics architecture includes how to use the GPU to speed up a wide variety of graphics applications (2D, 3D, print, etc.), display to the final display device, and include device detection and control. Windows 7 updates to the graphics architecture are mainly as follows:

WDDM 1.1: A new drive model

DirectX 11: Updated Direct3D 11, and associated new DIRECT2D APIs

DXVA-HD: HD Video playback acceleration

Display device connections and configuration

Color Management

High DPI output and readability

Multi-GPU System

Federated display adapters (also called federated rendering)

Here's a brief introduction to these improvements.

Windows 7 Core Graphics architecture

Windows applications communicate with APIs such as GDI (the main graphics interface of the Graphics Device interface,2d ERA system), Direct3D, OpenGL, and system graphics components, and system components pass WDDM (Windows Display Driver model, also known as Longhorn Display Driver model) and hardware interaction, from Vista, Windows has adopted and XP used XPDM different new drive model: WDDM, The drive model used determines the graphics characteristics of a system to a large extent. Vista uses a WDDM version of 1.0, while Windows7 uses an improved version of WDDM 1.1.

WDDM 1.1 brings a lot of changes, the following we look at WDDM 1.0 relative XPDM changes, that is, Vista relative to the changes in XP

XPDM: Non-synthetic models

WDDM: Synthetic model

In the mystery of vertical synchronization Xp/vista and 3D performance test, the author explained the difference of Ghost XP model, under the WDDM model, all the application generated display screen will eventually be in DWM (Desktop Windows Manager, Desktop window manager) into a single final output screen, so you get better displays (all of your natural programs are vertically synchronized), extra effects (thumbnails, scaling), and you can support the larger left, but the original WDDM 1 is just a big architectural transformation, and the details are still not perfect:

In Vista, GDI (which draws the usual 2D window APIs, in addition to many other graphics operations using GDI) and DirectX (the 3D application API) has different approaches: Direct3D is hardware-accelerated and GDI is not (GDI is hardware-accelerated when XPDM) , so vista users will feel slower than XP on some graphics programs, and GDI applications are processed to system memory by CPU software, then transferred to the video card driver allocated GDI memory area (also in system memory), and DWM is responsible for synthesizing the screen to the display

In Windows 7, GDI gained hardware acceleration (see below)-although GDI still does not have hardware acceleration when mixing the GDI and Direct3D APIs, the GDI output directly to the driven GDI memory area, reducing one step while reducing memory consumption ( The Direct3D API is also valid for mixed use); Obviously, mixing the API for graphics programming is not a good idea (of course, using both GDI and Direct3D means this is an old, Windowed mode 3D application, such as the old 3D game of Windows mode)

Old WDDM 1.0 processing GDI applications as I said before

In the Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 model, individual GDI will be hardware accelerated through the WDDM and GPU, and output to DWM through the GDI video memory area, in practice, most window operations become smoother than Vista and work faster ( The GDI API is used by most 2D applications because GDI includes too much content, so it must be compatible; About GDI, and then related content.

Direct3d/gdi driver architecture for Windows XP

Windows Vista Core graphics architecture, much richer than XP

The Windows 7 Core graphics architecture, the old gdi/gdi+ is still supported separately, however, Windows 7 offers new implementations of their corresponding functionality compared to the Vista band DirectX 10,windows 7 with DirectX 11, and WDDM Changes from 1.0 to 1.1 are different, and the version number of DirectX 11 indicates a larger change. Windows 7 DirectX 11 has changed the way it used to, upgrading Direct3D 10.1 to Direct3D 11, while dividing the work of gdi/gdi+ that previously vista could not accelerate hardware, Introduce the new direct2d and Directwrite APIs to complete:

Most of the previous graphics operations were done by Diredt3d and gdi/gdi+ (in addition to a wic--windows Image Component, which manages scanning, printing, and graphics decoding), and in Vista, GDI cannot accelerate hardware- As a result, Vista appears slow, and in Windows 7, the work of GDI, in addition to hardware acceleration through the WDDM model changes, is reclassified to DIRECT2D (2D acceleration), directwrite (Text Processing), and DXGI 1.1 ( Device control), these new APIs, or newly assigned APIs, have hardware acceleration, for example, DIRECT2D actually completes the acceleration through the Direct3D 10来:

DIRECT2D:

Hardware-Accelerated Real-time mode 2-D graphics API, which has high performance and quality in 2-D geometries, bitmaps, and text. The DIRECT2D API is designed to interoperate with GDI, GDI +, and Direct3D

Directwrite:

Directwrite provides high-quality text rendering, outline fonts with independent resolution, complete Unicode text, and layout support. When using DIRECT2D, the directwrite is hardware-accelerated.

When the system does not support Direct3D 10, Windows 7 uses D3D9 to do the work through an additional 10LEVEL9 software layer, and obviously, for the best efficiency, you need to use the DIRECT3D10 graphics card because Windows 7 of DWM based on Direct3D 10

Font anti-aliasing: Directwrite effect

Direct3D 11

The Windows 7 band Direct3D 11 is a D3D10 superset of features that can support running on both Direct3D9 and direct3d10.1 hardware, and in fact, DirectX 11 provides Vista support rather than direct When 10 came out, it only supported Vista and was not compatible with the previous generation, which led to a slow transfer of software developers to DirectX 10. DirectX 11 supports the features of multiple hardware platforms and multiple operating systems to make it easier to accept. At the same time, Direc3d 11 itself has a number of improvements, which will be discussed in detail (planned), here is a discussion of Windows 7 on the entire graphics operation of the improvement, through more gdi/gdi+ into the DirectX system to obtain hardware acceleration, graphical interface performance will be more and more good (of course, This requires software vendors to write with the new direct2d/directwrite. Microsoft wants to build all of its graphics operations on top of DirectX.

Regain hardware acceleration in the DirectX system with missing GDI hardware acceleration in Vista, and faster performance; future graphics vendors will no longer need to provide GDI acceleration

Display technology

Windows 7 supports a range of display technologies, including digital output as a primary output (HDMI and DisplayPort support, while old VGA analog output is deprecated), and Windows 7 also natively supports more content sources, such as Blu-ray, JPEG-XR, HDR pictures, and so on.

Windows 7 uses the default sRGB color space as a uniform workflow for all devices, but the precision is raised to 30 bits-each color channel adds two bits; Windows 7 supports 48-bit ScRGB mode with high precision + Extended range + High dynamic

WDDM 1.1 requires driver support Bgra,bgra is the fastest color format

Display device connections and configuration

In Ghost XP, all applications are displayed in a unified virtual desktop with a virtual desktop resolution of 64kx64k (65536x65536)

The virtual desktop is divided into different views according to the monitor, each of which corresponds to an adapter; an adapter does not mean that a video card, a video card connected to multiple monitors, it contains multiple adapters, similarly, SLI or CrossFireX connected single display means that it is a single adapter (added from Vista, called Linked-adapter feature)

However, in Vista, you can't use multiple graphics cards from different GPU vendors, and Windows 7 can

In the LDA configuration, XP system downloader interface in different output roaming is basically transparent, called Dynamic adapter switching switch

Under multiple monitors, Windows 7 provides a new global shortcut function: Win + P, you can quickly set up multiple display working status, this shortcut is designed specifically for the projector application

In general, the graphics architecture of Windows 7 is more sophisticated than Vista and more convenient to use. The most obvious is the change in the GDI API, and now the GDI application has hardware acceleration, just like under XP, which can only be handled by the processor, so users can feel the day-to-day application is smoother.