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 installed).
121-412: Direct2D takes advantage of hardware acceleration via the graphics processing unit ( GPU ) found in compatible graphics cards within personal computer, tablet, smartphone and modern graphical device. It offers high visual quality and fast rendering performance while maintaining full interoperability with classic Win32 graphics APIs such as GDI /GDI+ and modern graphics APIs such as Direct3D . Direct2D
242-491: A personal computer graphics display processor as a single large-scale integration (LSI) integrated circuit chip. This enabled the design of low-cost, high-performance video graphics cards such as those from Number Nine Visual Technology . It became the best-known GPU until the mid-1980s. It was the first fully integrated VLSI (very large-scale integration) metal–oxide–semiconductor ( NMOS ) graphics display processor for PCs, supported up to 1024×1024 resolution , and laid
363-562: A vector processor ), running compute kernels . This turns the massive computational power of a modern graphics accelerator's shader pipeline into general-purpose computing power. In certain applications requiring massive vector operations, this can yield several orders of magnitude higher performance than a conventional CPU. The two largest discrete (see " Dedicated graphics processing unit " above) GPU designers, AMD and Nvidia , are pursuing this approach with an array of applications. Both Nvidia and AMD teamed with Stanford University to create
484-452: A "Reading Mode" that strips unnecessary formatting from pages to improve their legibility. Edge also has a new feature called vertical tabs which allow users to move tabs on the left side of the screen. Preliminary support for browser extensions was added in March 2016, with build 14291, three extensions were initially supported. Microsoft indicated that the delay in allowing extensions and
605-560: A 14% share, slightly behind Safari's 16% share. As of September 2022 , Edge is used by 11% of PCs worldwide. Microsoft Edge is the default web browser, replacing Internet Explorer 11 and Internet Explorer Mobile . As its development and release is dependent on the model of Windows as a service , it is not included in Windows Enterprise Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) builds. Microsoft initially announced that Edge would support
726-457: A Direct3D surface, as well as to and from a GDI/GDI+ device context (HDC). It can be used effectively together with Windows Imaging Component (WIC) for image encoding/decoding, and with DirectWrite for text formatting and font processing. Such interoperability allows developers to gradually replace critical code paths with Direct2D code without the need to overhaul their entire source code. In Windows 10 timeframe, an Open Source project called Win2D
847-583: A GPU-based client for the Folding@home distributed computing project for protein folding calculations. In certain circumstances, the GPU calculates forty times faster than the CPUs traditionally used by such applications. GPGPUs can be used for many types of embarrassingly parallel tasks including ray tracing . They are generally suited to high-throughput computations that exhibit data-parallelism to exploit
968-717: A Microsoft browser was available on the Mac platform. The last time a Microsoft browser was available on the Mac platform was Internet Explorer for Mac , which was withdrawn in January 2006. On June 18, 2019, IAmA post on Reddit , an Edge developer stated that it was theoretically possible for a Linux version to be developed in the future, but no work had actually started on that possibility. On June 19, 2019, Microsoft made Edge available on old Windows versions for testing. On August 20, 2019, Microsoft made its first beta build of Edge available for Windows and macOS. August 2019 also saw
1089-507: A Vérité V2200 core to create a graphics card with a full T&L engine years before Nvidia's GeForce 256 ; This card, designed to reduce the load placed upon the system's CPU, never made it to market. NVIDIA RIVA 128 was one of the first consumer-facing GPU integrated 3D processing unit and 2D processing unit on a chip. OpenGL was introduced in the early '90s by SGI as a professional graphics API, with proprietary hardware support for 3D rasterization. In 1994 Microsoft acquired Softimage ,
1210-637: A beta version of Edge for Linux would be available in preview form in October 2020. This comes after the company announced in November 2019 that a Linux version would be developed and confirmed in May 2020 that the Linux version was in development. The first preview build for Linux was released on October 20, 2020. Full support for the new Edge on older Windows versions was scheduled to end on January 15, 2022, but
1331-565: A brand-new API extension to support digital ink, which is highly leveraged by the Microsoft Edge browser as well as the ink canvas XAML control. In their 2012 paper on the competing NV path rendering OpenGL extension, Mark Kilgard and Jeff Bolz explain (and criticize) the internals of Direct2D as follows: "Direct2D operates by transforming paths on the CPU and then performing a constrained trapezoidal tessellation of each path. The result
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#17328015662751452-469: A concern—except to invoke the pixel shader). Nvidia's CUDA platform, first introduced in 2007, was the earliest widely adopted programming model for GPU computing. OpenCL is an open standard defined by the Khronos Group that allows for the development of code for both GPUs and CPUs with an emphasis on portability. OpenCL solutions are supported by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM, and according to
1573-416: A cumulative monthly security update which replaced Edge Legacy with the new Chromium-based Edge. EdgeHTML is the proprietary browser engine originally developed for Edge. It is a fork of MSHTML (Trident) with all legacy code of older versions of Internet Explorer removed, with the majority of its source code rewritten to support web standards and interoperability with other modern browsers. EdgeHTML
1694-560: A development machine for Capcom 's CP System arcade board. Fujitsu's FM Towns computer, released in 1989, had support for a 16,777,216 color palette. In 1988, the first dedicated polygonal 3D graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the Namco System 21 and Taito Air System. IBM introduced its proprietary Video Graphics Array (VGA) display standard in 1987, with a maximum resolution of 640×480 pixels. In November 1988, NEC Home Electronics announced its creation of
1815-470: A device with minimal GPU support, under terminal service , Windows session 0 , or when graphics rendering is performed in a remote server with the graphical result sent back to the client device. Direct2D performance and memory usage scale linearly with primitive counts in both software and hardware. Direct2D supports high-quality rendering with the following key features: Direct2D allows full interoperability with GDI, GDI+, and permits rendering to and from
1936-463: A discrete video card or embedded on motherboards , mobile phones , personal computers , workstations , and game consoles . After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure . Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining . Arcade system boards have used specialized graphics circuits since
2057-603: A few weeks after release, showed that user uptake of Edge was low, with only 2% of overall computer users using the new browser. Among Windows 10 users, usage peaked at 20% and then dropped to 14% through August 2015. In October 2015, a security researcher published a report outlining a bug in Edge's "InPrivate" mode, causing data related to visited sites to still be cached in the user's profile directory, theoretically making it possible for others to determine sites visited. The bug gained mainstream attention in early February 2016, and
2178-657: A highly customizable function block and did not really "run" a program. Many of these disparities between vertex and pixel shading were not addressed until the Unified Shader Model . In October 2002, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon 9700 (also known as R300), the world's first Direct3D 9.0 accelerator, pixel and vertex shaders could implement looping and lengthy floating point math, and were quickly becoming as flexible as CPUs, yet orders of magnitude faster for image-array operations. Pixel shading
2299-466: A number of brand names. In 2009, Intel , Nvidia , and AMD / ATI were the market share leaders, with 49.4%, 27.8%, and 20.6% market share respectively. In addition, Matrox produces GPUs. Modern smartphones use mostly Adreno GPUs from Qualcomm , PowerVR GPUs from Imagination Technologies , and Mali GPUs from ARM . Modern GPUs have traditionally used most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics . In addition to
2420-615: A report in 2011 by Evans Data, OpenCL had become the second most popular HPC tool. In 2010, Nvidia partnered with Audi to power their cars' dashboards, using the Tegra GPU to provide increased functionality to cars' navigation and entertainment systems. Advances in GPU technology in cars helped advance self-driving technology . AMD's Radeon HD 6000 series cards were released in 2010, and in 2011 AMD released its 6000M Series discrete GPUs for mobile devices. The Kepler line of graphics cards by Nvidia were released in 2012 and were used in
2541-411: A single physical pool of RAM, allowing more efficient transfer of data. Hybrid GPUs compete with integrated graphics in the low-end desktop and notebook markets. The most common implementations of this are ATI's HyperMemory and Nvidia's TurboCache . Hybrid graphics cards are somewhat more expensive than integrated graphics, but much less expensive than dedicated graphics cards. They share memory with
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#17328015662752662-522: A specific use, real-time 3D graphics, or other mass calculations: Dedicated graphics processing units uses RAM that is dedicated to the GPU rather than relying on the computer’s main system memory. This RAM is usually specially selected for the expected serial workload of the graphics card (see GDDR ). Sometimes systems with dedicated discrete GPUs were called "DIS" systems as opposed to "UMA" systems (see next section). Dedicated GPUs are not necessarily removable, nor does it necessarily interface with
2783-603: A variety of imitators: by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. Fixed-function Windows accelerators surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, and such coprocessors faded from the PC market. Throughout the 1990s, 2D GUI acceleration evolved. As manufacturing capabilities improved, so did the level of integration of graphics chips. Additional application programming interfaces (APIs) arrived for
2904-538: A variety of tasks, such as Microsoft's WinG graphics library for Windows 3.x , and their later DirectDraw interface for hardware acceleration of 2D games in Windows 95 and later. In the early- and mid-1990s, real-time 3D graphics became increasingly common in arcade, computer, and console games, which led to increasing public demand for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. Early examples of mass-market 3D graphics hardware can be found in arcade system boards such as
3025-665: Is [that] the ultimate performance is determined not by the GPU (doing fairly trivial rasterization) but rather by the CPU performing the transformation and trapezoidal tessellation of each path and Direct3D validation work." In July 2012, the Windows 8 team posted the following on the blog of Steven Sinofsky : "To improve geometry rendering performance in Windows 8, we focused on reducing the CPU cost associated with tessellation in two ways. First, we optimized our implementation of tessellation when rendering simple geometries like rectangles, lines, rounded rectangles, and ellipses." These common-case optimizations claimed to improve performance in
3146-413: Is a native code API based on C++ that can be called by managed code and uses a "lightweight COM " approach just like Direct3D , with minimal amount of abstraction. However, unlike WPF and similarly to GDI/GDI+, Direct2D is an "immediate mode" rendering API with simple BeginDraw/Draw/EndDraw calls; Direct2D has no concept of a "scene" and does not use retained tree structures, and the rendering state
3267-487: Is a set of pixel-space trapezoids and additional shaded geometry to compute fractional coverage for the left and right edges of the trapezoids. These trapezoids and shaded geometry are then rasterized by the GPU. The resulting performance is generally better than entirely CPU-based approaches and requires no ancillary storage for multisample or stencil state ; Direct2D renders directly into an aliased framebuffer with properly antialiased results. Direct2D’s primary disadvantage
3388-472: Is accessible from the browser's offline error page and can also be accessed by entering edge://surf into the address bar. The game features three game modes (classic, time trial, and slalom), has character customization, and supports keyboard, mouse, touch, and gamepad controls. Its gameplay has been compared to the 1991 Microsoft video game SkiFree . In 2021, Surf was updated with limited-time seasonal theming resembling SkiFree . Instead of surfing,
3509-402: Is available in new GPU hardware designed for Windows 8 that supports DirectX 11.1." This was followed by a benchmark using some 15 SVGs , claiming performance improvements in the range of 151% to 523%. The section concluded: "We worked closely with our graphics hardware partners to design TIR. Dramatic improvements were made possible because of that partnership. DirectX 11.1 hardware is already on
3630-496: Is available). Since hardware tessellation is available in base Direct3D11 (not necessarily 11.1), Microsoft claimed significant performance improvements with Direct2D in Windows 8.1 (vs. Windows 8) on non-TIR hardware. Internet Explorer 9 and later versions use Direct2D and DirectWrite for improved performance and visual quality. Direct2D support was added in the alpha version of Firefox 3.7, roughly doubling its rendering speed. (Firefox 4 also added DirectWrite support, but this
3751-712: Is commonly referred to as "GPU accelerated video decoding", "GPU assisted video decoding", "GPU hardware accelerated video decoding", or "GPU hardware assisted video decoding". Recent graphics cards decode high-definition video on the card, offloading the central processing unit. The most common APIs for GPU accelerated video decoding are DxVA for Microsoft Windows operating systems and VDPAU , VAAPI , XvMC , and XvBA for Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. All except XvMC are capable of decoding videos encoded with MPEG-1 , MPEG-2 , MPEG-4 ASP (MPEG-4 Part 2) , MPEG-4 AVC (H.264 / DivX 6), VC-1 , WMV3 / WMV9 , Xvid / OpenDivX (DivX 4), and DivX 5 codecs , while XvMC
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3872-736: Is not available. Technologies such as Scan-Line Interleave by 3dfx, SLI and NVLink by Nvidia and CrossFire by AMD allow multiple GPUs to draw images simultaneously for a single screen, increasing the processing power available for graphics. These technologies, however, are increasingly uncommon; most games do not fully use multiple GPUs, as most users cannot afford them. Multiple GPUs are still used on supercomputers (like in Summit ), on workstations to accelerate video (processing multiple videos at once) and 3D rendering, for VFX , GPGPU workloads and for simulations, and in AI to expedite training, as
3993-708: Is often used for bump mapping , which adds texture to make an object look shiny, dull, rough, or even round or extruded. With the introduction of the Nvidia GeForce 8 series and new generic stream processing units, GPUs became more generalized computing devices. Parallel GPUs are making computational inroads against the CPU, and a subfield of research, dubbed GPU computing or GPGPU for general purpose computing on GPU , has found applications in fields as diverse as machine learning , oil exploration , scientific image processing , linear algebra , statistics , 3D reconstruction , and stock options pricing. GPGPU
4114-518: Is only capable of decoding MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. There are several dedicated hardware video decoding and encoding solutions . Video decoding processes that can be accelerated by modern GPU hardware are: These operations also have applications in video editing, encoding, and transcoding. An earlier GPU may support one or more 2D graphics API for 2D acceleration, such as GDI and DirectDraw . A GPU can support one or more 3D graphics API, such as DirectX , Metal , OpenGL , OpenGL ES , Vulkan . In
4235-408: Is preserved between drawing calls. Direct2D can minimize CPU usage and utilize hardware rendering on a graphics card with minimum support of Direct3D Feature Level 9 with WDDM 1.1 drivers. Applications can choose to use it exclusively with CPU, the so-called software rendering by using it in conjunction with WARP10 in situations when hardware capability is not available, such as when running within
4356-687: Is the Super FX chip, a RISC -based on-cartridge graphics chip used in some SNES games, notably Doom and Star Fox . Some systems used DSPs to accelerate transformations. Fujitsu , which worked on the Sega Model 2 arcade system, began working on integrating T&L into a single LSI solution for use in home computers in 1995; the Fujitsu Pinolite, the first 3D geometry processor for personal computers, released in 1997. The first hardware T&L GPU on home video game consoles
4477-457: Is the case with Nvidia's lineup of DGX workstations and servers, Tesla GPUs, and Intel's Ponte Vecchio GPUs. Integrated graphics processing units (IGPU), integrated graphics , shared graphics solutions , integrated graphics processors (IGP), or unified memory architectures (UMA) use a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. IGPs can be integrated onto a motherboard as part of its northbridge chipset, or on
4598-576: Is written in C++ . The rendering engine was first released as an experimental option in Internet Explorer 11 as part of the Windows 10 Preview 9926 build. EdgeHTML is meant to be fully compatible with the WebKit layout engine used by Safari and other browsers. Microsoft stated their original acceptance criteria: "Any Edge–WebKit differences are bugs that we're interested in fixing." A review of
4719-464: The Chromium source code, using the same browser engine as Google Chrome but with enhancements developed by Microsoft. It was also announced that there will be versions of Edge available for older Windows versions, including Windows 7 and Windows 8 . x , and macOS , plus that all versions will be updated on a more frequent basis. According to Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore , the decision for
4840-609: The GeForce 256 as "the world's first GPU". It was presented as a "single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping , and rendering engines". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term " visual processing unit " or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002. The AMD Alveo MA35D features dual VPU’s, each using the 5 nm process in 2023. In personal computers, there are two main forms of GPUs. Each has many synonyms: Most GPUs are designed for
4961-580: The HTML5test . Chrome 44 and Firefox 42 scored 479 and 434 respectively, while Internet Explorer 11 scored 312. In August 2015, Microsoft released Windows 10 Build 10532 to insiders, which included Edge 21.10532.0. This beta version scored 445 out of 555 points on the HTML5test. In July 2016, with the release of Windows 10 Build 14390 to insiders, the HTML5 test score of the browser's development version
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5082-517: The Intel Core line and with contemporary Pentiums and Celerons. This resulted in a large nominal market share, as the majority of computers with an Intel CPU also featured this embedded graphics processor. These generally lagged behind discrete processors in performance. Intel re-entered the discrete GPU market in 2022 with its Arc series, which competed with the then-current GeForce 30 series and Radeon 6000 series cards at competitive prices. In
5203-589: The New Xbox Experience Update . On November 18, 2015, the update was to Mobile. Finally, on November 19, 2015, the update was also made available as part of the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4. In November 2017, Microsoft released ports of Edge for Android and iOS . The apps feature integration and synchronization with the desktop version on Windows PCs. Due to platform restrictions and other factors, these ports do not use
5324-465: The PowerVR and the 3dfx Voodoo . However, as manufacturing technology continued to progress, video, 2D GUI acceleration, and 3D functionality were all integrated into one chip. Rendition 's Verite chipsets were among the first to do this well. In 1997, Rendition collaborated with Hercules and Fujitsu on a "Thriller Conspiracy" project which combined a Fujitsu FXG-1 Pinolite geometry processor with
5445-522: The Sega Model 1 , Namco System 22 , and Sega Model 2 , and the fifth-generation video game consoles such as the Saturn , PlayStation , and Nintendo 64 . Arcade systems such as the Sega Model 2 and SGI Onyx -based Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator in 1993 were capable of hardware T&L ( transform, clipping, and lighting ) years before appearing in consumer graphics cards. Another early example
5566-616: The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) to develop and promote a Super VGA (SVGA) computer display standard as a successor to VGA. Super VGA enabled graphics display resolutions up to 800×600 pixels , a 36% increase. In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the S3 86C911 , which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an indication of the performance increase it promised. The 86C911 spawned
5687-412: The motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI Express (PCIe) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). They can usually be replaced or upgraded with relative ease, assuming the motherboard is capable of supporting the upgrade. A few graphics cards still use Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots, but their bandwidth is so limited that they are generally used only when a PCIe or AGP slot
5808-465: The rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems . Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations that are supported by CPUs , oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing , and very high-precision color spaces . Several factors of GPU construction affect
5929-483: The 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for graphics processor unit and described a programmable processing unit working independently from the CPU that was responsible for graphics manipulation and output. In 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for graphics processing unit ) in reference to the PlayStation console's Toshiba -designed Sony GPU . The term was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed
6050-594: The 1970s. In early video game hardware, RAM for frame buffers was expensive, so video chips composited data together as the display was being scanned out on the monitor. A specialized barrel shifter circuit helped the CPU animate the framebuffer graphics for various 1970s arcade video games from Midway and Taito , such as Gun Fight (1975), Sea Wolf (1976), and Space Invaders (1978). The Namco Galaxian arcade system in 1979 used specialized graphics hardware that supported RGB color , multi-colored sprites, and tilemap backgrounds. The Galaxian hardware
6171-598: The 2020s, GPUs have been increasingly used for calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems, such as training of neural networks on enormous datasets that are needed for large language models . Specialized processing cores on some modern workstation's GPUs are dedicated for deep learning since they have significant FLOPS performance increases, using 4×4 matrix multiplication and division, resulting in hardware performance up to 128 TFLOPS in some applications. These tensor cores are expected to appear in consumer cards, as well. Many companies have produced GPUs under
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#17328015662756292-422: The 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). Newer cards such as AMD/ATI HD5000–HD7000 lack dedicated 2D acceleration; it is emulated by 3D hardware. GPUs were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons. Later, units were added to accelerate geometric calculations such as
6413-698: The CPU for relatively slow system RAM, as it has minimal or no dedicated video memory. IGPs use system memory with bandwidth up to a current maximum of 128 GB/s, whereas a discrete graphics card may have a bandwidth of more than 1000 GB/s between its VRAM and GPU core. This memory bus bandwidth can limit the performance of the GPU, though multi-channel memory can mitigate this deficiency. Older integrated graphics chipsets lacked hardware transform and lighting , but newer ones include it. On systems with "Unified Memory Architecture" (UMA), including modern AMD processors with integrated graphics, modern Intel processors with integrated graphics, Apple processors,
6534-529: The Canary, Dev, and Beta channels the "Microsoft Edge insider channels". As a result, Edge updates were decoupled from new versions of Windows. Major versions of Edge Stable are now scheduled for release every 4 weeks, closely following Chromium version releases. In May 2020, an update to Microsoft Edge added Surf , a browser game where players control a surfer attempting to evade obstacles and collect powerups. Similar to Google Chrome's Dinosaur Game , Surf
6655-661: The Hub, a sidebar providing functionality similar to Internet Explorer's Downloads manager and Favorites Center. Edge features a built-in PDF reader, and supports WebAssembly . Until January 2021, Edge also featured an integrated Adobe Flash Player (with an internal whitelist allowing Flash applets on Facebook websites to load automatically, bypassing all other security controls requiring user activation). Edge does not support legacy technologies such as ActiveX and Browser Helper Objects , instead it uses an extension system based on
6776-487: The Nvidia's 600 and 700 series cards. A feature in this GPU microarchitecture included GPU boost, a technology that adjusts the clock-speed of a video card to increase or decrease it according to its power draw. The Kepler microarchitecture was manufactured on the 28 nm process . The PS4 and Xbox One were released in 2013; they both use GPUs based on AMD's Radeon HD 7850 and 7790 . Nvidia's Kepler line of GPUs
6897-568: The PC world, notable failed attempts for low-cost 3D graphics chips included the S3 ViRGE , ATI Rage , and Matrox Mystique . These chips were essentially previous-generation 2D accelerators with 3D features bolted on. Many were pin-compatible with the earlier-generation chips for ease of implementation and minimal cost. Initially, 3D graphics were possible only with discrete boards dedicated to accelerating 3D functions (and lacking 2D graphical user interface (GUI) acceleration entirely) such as
7018-573: The PS5 and Xbox Series (among others), the CPU cores and the GPU block share the same pool of RAM and memory address space. This allows the system to dynamically allocate memory between the CPU cores and the GPU block based on memory needs (without needing a large static split of the RAM) and thanks to zero copy transfers, removes the need for either copying data over a bus (computing) between physically separate RAM pools or copying between separate address spaces on
7139-556: The R9 290X or better at the time of their release. Cards based on the Pascal microarchitecture were released in 2016. The GeForce 10 series of cards are of this generation of graphics cards. They are made using the 16 nm manufacturing process which improves upon previous microarchitectures. Nvidia released one non-consumer card under the new Volta architecture, the Titan V. Changes from
7260-535: The RTX 20 series GPUs that added ray-tracing cores to GPUs, improving their performance on lighting effects. Polaris 11 and Polaris 10 GPUs from AMD are fabricated by a 14 nm process. Their release resulted in a substantial increase in the performance per watt of AMD video cards. AMD also released the Vega GPU series for the high end market as a competitor to Nvidia's high end Pascal cards, also featuring HBM2 like
7381-560: The RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6700 XT, which is based on Navi 22, was launched in early 2021. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S were released in 2020; they both use GPUs based on the RDNA 2 microarchitecture with incremental improvements and different GPU configurations in each system's implementation. Intel first entered the GPU market in the late 1990s, but produced lackluster 3D accelerators compared to
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#17328015662757502-608: The Titan V. In 2019, AMD released the successor to their Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture/instruction set. Dubbed RDNA, the first product featuring it was the Radeon RX 5000 series of video cards. The company announced that the successor to the RDNA microarchitecture would be incremental (aka a refresh). AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 6000 series , its RDNA 2 graphics cards with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The product series, launched in late 2020, consisted of
7623-493: The Titan XP, Pascal's high-end card, include an increase in the number of CUDA cores, the addition of tensor cores, and HBM2 . Tensor cores are designed for deep learning, while high-bandwidth memory is on-die, stacked, lower-clocked memory that offers an extremely wide memory bus. To emphasize that the Titan V is not a gaming card, Nvidia removed the "GeForce GTX" suffix it adds to consumer gaming cards. In 2018, Nvidia launched
7744-456: The actual display rate. Most GPUs made since 1995 support the YUV color space and hardware overlays , important for digital video playback, and many GPUs made since 2000 also support MPEG primitives such as motion compensation and iDCT . This hardware-accelerated video decoding, in which portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing are offloaded to the GPU hardware,
7865-609: The basis of the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture ("TIGA") Windows accelerator cards. In 1987, the IBM 8514 graphics system was released. It was one of the first video cards for IBM PC compatibles to implement fixed-function 2D primitives in electronic hardware . Sharp 's X68000 , released in 1987, used a custom graphics chipset with a 65,536 color palette and hardware support for sprites, scrolling, and multiple playfields. It served as
7986-412: The best battery performance. Edge sends the images that the users view online to Microsoft servers by default, although Microsoft has stated that it encrypts images before transfer. In an August 2015 review of Windows 10 by Dan Grabham of TechRadar , Microsoft Edge was praised for its performance, despite not being in a feature-complete state at launch. Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica praised
8107-612: The books: " Game of X " v.1 and v.2 by Russel Demaria, " Renegades of the Empire " by Mike Drummond, " Opening the Xbox " by Dean Takahashi and " Masters of Doom " by David Kushner. The Nvidia GeForce 256 (also known as NV10) was the first consumer-level card with hardware-accelerated T&L; While the OpenGL API provided software support for texture mapping and lighting the first 3D hardware acceleration for these features arrived with
8228-599: The browser for being "tremendously promising" and "a much better browser than Internet Explorer ever was" but criticized it for its lack of functionality on launch. Thom Holwerda of OSNews criticized Edge in August 2015 for its hidden URL bar, lack of user friendliness, poor design and a tab system that is "so utterly broken it should never have shipped in a final release". He described the browser's implemented features as "some sort of cosmic joke", saying that "infuriating doesn't even begin to describe it". Data from August 2015,
8349-430: The browser. These pre-release builds were known as "Edge Preview". Every major release of Windows included an updated version of Edge and its render engine. On April 8, 2019, Microsoft announced the introduction of four preview channels: Canary , Dev , Beta , and Stable and launched the Canary and Dev channels that same day with the first preview builds, for those channels, of the new Edge. Microsoft collectively calls
8470-405: The change came after CEO Satya Nadella told the team in 2017 that the product needed to be better and pushed for replacing its in-house rendering engine with an open source one. On April 8, 2019, the first builds of the new Edge for Windows were released to the public. On May 20, 2019, the first preview builds of Edge for macOS were released to the public, marking the first time in 13 years that
8591-579: The competition at the time. Rather than attempting to compete with the high-end manufacturers Nvidia and ATI/AMD, they began integrating Intel Graphics Technology GPUs into motherboard chipsets, beginning with the Intel 810 for the Pentium III, and later into CPUs. They began with the Intel Atom 'Pineview' laptop processor in 2009, continuing in 2010 with desktop processors in the first generation of
8712-430: The cross-browser WebExtension API. Internet Explorer 11 remained available alongside Edge for compatibility until 2023, when it was removed. It did not use the Edge engine as was previously announced. In Windows 11 , Edge became the only browser available from Microsoft. However, it includes an "Internet Explorer mode", aimed at fixing compatibility issues; it provides the legacy MSHTML browser engine and supports
8833-413: The desktop and mobile versions of Windows. Microsoft officially unveiled "Spartan" during a Windows-focused keynote on January 21, 2015. It was described as a separate product from Internet Explorer, its final name was not announced. "Spartan" was first made publicly available as the default browser of Windows 10 Technical Preview build 10049, released on March 30, 2015. The new engine used by "Spartan"
8954-541: The dominant CGI movie production tool used for early CGI movie hits like Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Titanic. With that deal came a strategic relationship with SGI and a commercial license of SGI's OpenGL libraries enabling Microsoft to port the API to the Windows NT OS but not to the upcoming release of Windows '95. Although it was little known at the time, SGI had contracted with Microsoft to transition from Unix to
9075-586: The driver level, but requires new hardware; the Maxwell 2 architecture, introduced in September 2014, is such hardware. In Windows 8.1 , Direct2D can use the Direct3D11 hardware tesselators, but only in conjunction with D2D1_FILL_MODE_ALTERNATE . If another fill mode is used (e.g. D2D1_FILL_MODE_WINDING ) then Direct2D falls back to tessellation on the CPU, but still uses TIR for anti-aliasing (if TIR
9196-529: The engine in the beta Windows 10 build by AnandTech found substantial benchmark improvements over MSHTML (Trident), particularly its new Chakra JavaScript engine performance, which had come up to par with that of Google Chrome. Other benchmarks focusing on the performance of the WebGL API found EdgeHTML to perform much better than Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox . Codenamed " Anaheim ", on December 6, 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to base Edge on
9317-517: The first Direct3D accelerated consumer GPU's . Nvidia was first to produce a chip capable of programmable shading : the GeForce 3 . Each pixel could now be processed by a short program that could include additional image textures as inputs, and each geometric vertex could likewise be processed by a short program before it was projected onto the screen. Used in the Xbox console, this chip competed with
9438-479: The first Direct3D GPU's. Nvidia, quickly pivoted from a failed deal with Sega in 1996 to aggressively embracing support for Direct3D. In this era Microsoft merged their internal Direct3D and OpenGL teams and worked closely with SGI to unify driver standards for both industrial and consumer 3D graphics hardware accelerators. Microsoft ran annual events for 3D chip makers called "Meltdowns" to test their 3D hardware and drivers to work both with Direct3D and OpenGL. It
9559-598: The first beta release of Edge in Windows 10 Build 10049—had drastically better JavaScript performance due to the new Chakra than MSHTML (Trident) 7 using the older Chakra in Internet Explorer 11 , with similar performance to Google Chrome 41 and Mozilla Firefox 37. In the SunSpider benchmark, Edge performed faster than other browsers, while in other benchmarks it operated slower than Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera . Later benchmarks conducted with
9680-481: The first major CMOS graphics processor for personal computers. The ARTC could display up to 4K resolution when in monochrome mode. It was used in a number of graphics cards and terminals during the late 1980s. In 1985, the Amiga was released with a custom graphics chip including a blitter for bitmap manipulation, line drawing, and area fill. It also included a coprocessor with its own simple instruction set, that
9801-496: The forthcoming Windows '95 consumer OS, in '95 Microsoft announced the acquisition of UK based Rendermorphics Ltd and the Direct3D driver model for the acceleration of consumer 3D graphics. The Direct3D driver model shipped with DirectX 2.0 in 1996. It included standards and specifications for 3D chip makers to compete to support 3D texture, lighting and Z-buffering. ATI, which was later to be acquired by AMD, began development on
9922-441: The forthcoming Windows NT OS , the deal which was signed in 1995 was not announced publicly until 1998. In the intervening period, Microsoft worked closely with SGI to port OpenGL to Windows NT. In that era OpenGL had no standard driver model for competing hardware accelerators to compete on the basis of support for higher level 3D texturing and lighting functionality. In 1994 Microsoft announced DirectX 1.0 and support for gaming in
10043-483: The foundations for the emerging PC graphics market. It was used in a number of graphics cards and was licensed for clones such as the Intel 82720, the first of Intel's graphics processing units . The Williams Electronics arcade games Robotron 2084 , Joust , Sinistar , and Bubbles , all released in 1982, contain custom blitter chips for operating on 16-color bitmaps. In 1984, Hitachi released ARTC HD63484,
10164-484: The legacy MSHTML browser engine and supports the legacy ActiveX and BHO technologies. In February 2023, according to StatCounter , Microsoft Edge became the third most popular browser in the world, behind Apple Safari and Chrome, while as of December 2023 Edge is second most popular PC/desktop web browser with Safari sliding to 3rd place. In the United States, Edge is the third most popular, where it has
10285-421: The legacy ActiveX and BHO technologies. Edge integrates with Microsoft's online platforms to provide voice control, search functionality, and dynamic information related to searches within the address bar. Users can make annotations to web pages that can be stored to and shared with OneDrive , and can save HTML and MHTML pages to their computers. It also integrates with the "Reading List" function and provides
10406-520: The legacy MSHTML (Trident) browser engine for backward compatibility , but later said that, due to "strong feedback", Edge would use a new engine, while Internet Explorer would continue to provide the legacy engine. The developer toolset of the EdgeHTML-based versions featured an option to emulate the rendering behaviour ("document mode") of Internet Explorer versions 5 to 11. Favorites, reading list, browsing history and downloads are viewed at
10527-422: The market today and we’re working with our partners to make sure more TIR-capable products will be broadly available." The TIR feature was among those that caused a "war of words" between Nvidia and AMD around December 2012, because Nvidia's Kepler GPU family does not support it, whereas AMD's GCN does. In response to customer demands, an Nvidia support staffer posted that TIR cannot be simply implemented at
10648-581: The motherboard in a standard fashion. The term "dedicated" refers to the fact that graphics cards have RAM that is dedicated to the card's use, not to the fact that most dedicated GPUs are removable. Dedicated GPUs for portable computers are most commonly interfaced through a non-standard and often proprietary slot due to size and weight constraints. Such ports may still be considered PCIe or AGP in terms of their logical host interface, even if they are not physically interchangeable with their counterparts. Graphics cards with dedicated GPUs typically interface with
10769-410: The number of core on-silicon processor units within the GPU chip that perform the core calculations, typically working in parallel with other SM/CUs on the GPU. GPU performance is typically measured in floating point operations per second ( FLOPS ); GPUs in the 2010s and 2020s typically deliver performance measured in teraflops (TFLOPS). This is an estimated performance measure, as other factors can affect
10890-519: The one in the PlayStation 2 , which used a custom vector unit for hardware accelerated vertex processing (commonly referred to as VU0/VU1). The earliest incarnations of shader execution engines used in Xbox were not general purpose and could not execute arbitrary pixel code. Vertices and pixels were processed by different units which had their own resources, with pixel shaders having tighter constraints (because they execute at higher frequencies than vertices). Pixel shading engines were actually more akin to
11011-551: The original browser (now referred to as Microsoft Edge Legacy ). Edge is also available on older Windows versions until early 2023, as well as Linux . Although it was created as the successor to Internet Explorer (IE), Internet Explorer 11 remained available alongside Edge for compatibility until 2023, when it was removed. In Windows 11 , Edge is the only browser available from Microsoft (for compatibility with Google Chrome ). However, it includes an "Internet Explorer mode," aimed at fixing compatibility issues; it provides
11132-401: The performance improvement of rendering scalable text without font rasterization , the ability to download the needed font from the cloud on demand without requiring the font installation step, an optimization for faster image loading and image effect rendering, and a more sophisticated way to apply gradient brush through the use of 2D mesh made of gradient patches. This release also introduced
11253-410: The performance of the card for real-time rendering, such as the size of the connector pathways in the semiconductor device fabrication , the clock signal frequency, and the number and size of various on-chip memory caches . Performance is also affected by the number of streaming multiprocessors (SM) for NVidia GPUs, or compute units (CU) for AMD GPUs, or Xe cores for Intel discrete GPUs, which describe
11374-565: The player skis down a mountain while being chased by a yeti . In December 2014, writing for ZDNet , technology writer Mary Jo Foley reported that Microsoft was developing a new web browser codenamed " Spartan ". She said that "Spartan" would be treated as a new product separate from Internet Explorer, with Internet Explorer 11 retained alongside it for compatibility. In early January 2015, The Verge obtained further details surrounding "Spartan" from sources close to Microsoft, including reports that it would replace Internet Explorer on both
11495-437: The preview program for the next version of Microsoft Edge. They released version 20.10512 to Mobile users. 6 days later followed by version 20.10525 for desktop users. The preview received multiple updates. On November 5, 2015, Microsoft released version 25.10586 as the final release for Edge's second public release for desktop users. On November 12, 2015, the update was rolled out to both desktop users and Xbox One users as part of
11616-451: The range of 184% to 438%, depending on the primitive. The post continued: "Second, to improve performance when rendering irregular geometry (e.g. geographical borders on a map), we use a new graphics hardware feature called Target Independent Rasterization , or TIR. TIR enables Direct2D to spend fewer CPU cycles on tessellation, so it can give drawing instructions to the GPU more quickly and efficiently, without sacrificing visual quality. TIR
11737-538: The removal of Microsoft Edge Legacy's support for the EPUB file format. At Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft released an updated version of the Edge logo. The new Edge was released on January 15, 2020, and was gradually rolled out to all Windows 10 users. The new Edge was also rolled out to Windows users via Windows Update . Windows Vista and earlier were not supported at the time Edge started supporting older Windows versions. On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that
11858-482: The same die (integrated circuit) with the CPU (like AMD APU or Intel HD Graphics ). On certain motherboards, AMD's IGPs can use dedicated sideport memory: a separate fixed block of high performance memory that is dedicated for use by the GPU. As of early 2007 computers with integrated graphics account for about 90% of all PC shipments. They are less costly to implement than dedicated graphics processing, but tend to be less capable. Historically, integrated processing
11979-493: The same layout engine as the desktop version and instead use OS-native WebKit -based engines. In April 2018, Edge added tab audio muting. In June 2018, support for the Web Authentication specifications were added to Windows Insider builds, with support for Windows Hello and external security tokens. Microsoft stopped supporting Microsoft Edge Legacy on March 9, 2021. On April 13, 2021, Microsoft released
12100-502: The same time. A new feature "Workspaces" was introduced, which basically lets the user create different spaces for various things. These workspaces are also collaborative, users can invite friends or colleagues and seamlessly have completely separate workspace for collaboration. Microsoft Edge Legacy's release cadence was tied to the Windows release cycle and used the Windows Insider Program to preview new versions of
12221-415: The scan lines map to specific bitmapped or character modes and where the memory is stored (so there did not need to be a contiguous frame buffer). 6502 machine code subroutines could be triggered on scan lines by setting a bit on a display list instruction. ANTIC also supported smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling independent of the CPU. The NEC μPD7220 was the first implementation of
12342-516: The small number was due to security concerns. As of December 2022, there are more than 9,000 extensions—called add-ons —available for Edge. On February 7, 2023, Microsoft announced a major overhaul to Edge, revamping the user interface with Fluent Design , along with adding a Bing Chat (later known as Microsoft Copilot ) button, which replaces the Discover button. Microsoft also added compatibility for split screen i.e. 2 tabs can be viewed at
12463-421: The summer of 2012 that "most desktop applications don't use Direct2D." Microsoft Office 2013 supports either Direct2D+DirectWrite or GDI+ Uniscribe for display rendering and typography. Graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit ( GPU ) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics , being present either as
12584-486: The system and have a small dedicated memory cache, to make up for the high latency of the system RAM. Technologies within PCI Express make this possible. While these solutions are sometimes advertised as having as much as 768 MB of RAM, this refers to how much can be shared with the system memory. It is common to use a general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) as a modified form of stream processor (or
12705-524: The version included in 10122 showed significant performance improvement compared to both IE11 and Edge back in 10049. According to Microsoft's benchmark result, this iteration of Edge performed better than both Chrome and Firefox in Google's Octane 2.0 and Apple's Jetstream benchmark. Edge originally lacked support for open media standards such as WebM and Opus , but these were later added in Edge 14.14291. In July 2015, Edge scored 377 out of 555 points on
12826-404: The wide vector width SIMD architecture of the GPU. Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge (or simply nicknamed Edge ) is a proprietary cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft . Released in 2015 along with both Windows 10 and Xbox One , it was initially built with Microsoft's own proprietary browser engine , EdgeHTML , and their Chakra JavaScript engine . Later on, it
12947-413: Was ported to Android and iOS as a fork of Google 's Chromium open-source project . In late 2018, Microsoft announced it would completely rebuild Edge as a Chromium -based browser with Blink and V8 engines, which allowed the browser to be ported to macOS . The new Edge was publicly released in January 2020, and on Xbox platforms in 2021. Microsoft has since terminated security support for
13068-628: Was 460 out of 555 points. Chrome 51 scored 497, Firefox 47 scored 456, and Safari 9.1 scored 370. In June 2017, Edge 17 had scored 492/555 on HTML5test . In June 2016, Microsoft published benchmark results to prove the superior power efficiency of Edge in comparison to all other major web browsers. Opera questioned the accuracy and provided their own test results where Opera came out on top. Independent testing by PC World confirmed Microsoft's results. However, tests conducted by Linus Sebastian in June 2017 instead showed that, at that time, Chrome had
13189-873: Was also backported to Windows 7 SP1 (but not to Windows Vista) via the Windows 7 platform update . The original version of Direct2D was tied to DirectX 11 (in hardware, up to Direct3D 10.1 is used), whereas this version of Direct2D integrates with DirectX 11.1. Windows 8 also added interoperability between XAML and Direct2D along with Direct3D components, which can be all mixed in an application. New features were added to Direct2D with Windows 8.1 in October 2013: Geometry realizations , Direct2D effects API, command list API, multithreading APIs, per-device rendering priority, support for JPEG YCbCr images for smaller memory footprint , and support for block compressed formats (DDS files). The release of Windows 10 in July 2015 brought important updates and new features to Direct2D such as
13310-531: Was available in Windows builds as part of Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft later announced that Internet Explorer would be deprecated on Windows and would not use the "Spartan" engine. On April 29, 2015, during the Build Conference keynote, it was announced that "Spartan" would officially be known as Microsoft Edge. The browser's logo and branding were designed to maintain continuity with the branding of Internet Explorer. The Project "Spartan" branding
13431-471: Was capable of manipulating graphics hardware registers in sync with the video beam (e.g. for per-scanline palette switches, sprite multiplexing, and hardware windowing), or driving the blitter. In 1986, Texas Instruments released the TMS34010 , the first fully programmable graphics processor. It could run general-purpose code, but it had a graphics-oriented instruction set. During 1990–1992, this chip became
13552-504: Was considered unfit for 3D games or graphically intensive programs but could run less intensive programs such as Adobe Flash. Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004. However, modern integrated graphics processors such as AMD Accelerated Processing Unit and Intel Graphics Technology (HD, UHD, Iris, Iris Pro, Iris Plus, and Xe-LP ) can handle 2D graphics or low-stress 3D graphics. Since GPU computations are memory-intensive, integrated processing may compete with
13673-511: Was developed by Microsoft to further simplify the usage of Direct2D and DirectWrite in Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application. Win2D is a highly-efficient WinRT wrapper of Direct2D and DirectWrite designed from the ground up to integrate seamlessly with XAML Canvas control while preserving the power of the underlying graphics subsystem. An updated version of Direct2D was launched with Windows 8 in October 2012. It
13794-517: Was during this period of strong Microsoft influence over 3D standards that 3D accelerator cards moved beyond being simple rasterizers to become more powerful general purpose processors as support for hardware accelerated texture mapping, lighting, Z-buffering and compute created the modern GPU. During this period the same Microsoft team responsible for Direct3D and OpenGL driver standardization introduced their own Microsoft 3D chip design called Talisman . Details of this era are documented extensively in
13915-515: Was followed by the Maxwell line, manufactured on the same process. Nvidia's 28 nm chips were manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan using the 28 nm process. Compared to the 40 nm technology from the past, this manufacturing process allowed a 20 percent boost in performance while drawing less power. Virtual reality headsets have high system requirements; manufacturers recommended the GTX 970 and
14036-523: Was later extended to January 15, 2023. On April 29, 2022, Microsoft announced integrated VPN support for Microsoft Edge, coming in line with this privacy feature with Chrome and Firefox. There will be a free version of the integrated Edge VPN available but is limited to 1 GB of data transfer. Initial release of the Chromium-based version Early benchmarks of the EdgeHTML engine—included in
14157-523: Was made non-default for some fonts in Firefox 7 due to user complaints about the rendering quality. Google Chrome uses its own 2D library called Skia , which in turn renders through ANGLE on Windows.) In Firefox 70.0, on old hardware, Direct2D is disabled on blacklisted old graphics drivers if they lack features and area is blacked out e.g. in Google Maps . Ars Technica 's Peter Bright noted in
14278-498: Was the Nintendo 64 's Reality Coprocessor , released in 1996. In 1997, Mitsubishi released the 3Dpro/2MP , a GPU capable of transformation and lighting, for workstations and Windows NT desktops; ATi used it for its FireGL 4000 graphics card , released in 1997. The term "GPU" was coined by Sony in reference to the 32-bit Sony GPU (designed by Toshiba ) in the PlayStation video game console, released in 1994. In
14399-426: Was the precursor to what is now called a compute shader (e.g. CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute) and actually abused the hardware to a degree by treating the data passed to algorithms as texture maps and executing algorithms by drawing a triangle or quad with an appropriate pixel shader. This entails some overheads since units like the scan converter are involved where they are not needed (nor are triangle manipulations even
14520-451: Was used in versions released after Build 2015. On June 25, 2015, Microsoft released version 19.10149 for Windows 10 Mobile which included the new brand. On June 28, 2015, version 20.10158 followed for the desktop versions, also including the updated branding. On July 15, 2015, Microsoft released version 20.10240 as the final release to Insiders. The same version was rolled out to consumers on July 29, 2015. On August 12, 2015, Microsoft started
14641-484: Was widely used during the golden age of arcade video games , by game companies such as Namco , Centuri , Gremlin , Irem , Konami , Midway, Nichibutsu , Sega , and Taito. The Atari 2600 in 1977 used a video shifter called the Television Interface Adaptor . Atari 8-bit computers (1979) had ANTIC , a video processor which interpreted instructions describing a " display list "—the way
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