Microsoft will give an introduction to the Direct3D 11 graphics pipeline including a lowdown on the upcoming Direct3D API set at XNA gamefest conference that takes place June 22 &23 in Seattle, Washington.

The company's representatives will talk about how Direct3D 11 extends and enhances Direct3D 10 with new hardware and API calls. This talk will discuss the features in Direct3D 11 that enable professionals to create content that scales from small screens to high-resolution displays, and across different CPU and GPU configurations.

Direct3D 11 contains new programmable and fixed function stages designed to enable powerful, flexible tessellation approaches at interactive frame rates in games and modeling applications. Microsoft describes this as the "evolution pf graphics" so it is expected to be at least an interesting presentation.

The Direct3D API also imposes some constraints on the processing model in order to achieve optimal rendering performance. Direct3D 11 introduces the Compute Shader as a way to access this computational capability without so many constraints. It opens the door to operations on more general data-structures than just arrays, and to new classes of algorithms as well. Key features include: communication of data between threads, and a rich set of primitives for random access and streaming I/O operations. These features enable faster and simpler implementations of techniques already in use, such as imaging and post-processing effects, and also open up new techniques that become feasible on Direct3D 11?class hardware.

Microsoft will also present the new High Level Shader Language 5.0. The next version of HLSL features coming in Direct3D 11, including support for Dynamic Shader Linkage and more. The company will talk about how HLSL 5.0 brings support for interfaces, objects, and polymorphism.

AMD and Nvidia will also participate in the event with advanced topics in GPU tessellation. Natasha Tatarchuk of AMD will present a number of rendering techniques using GPU tessellation, using both current architectures and Direct3D 11. In addition, AMD will cover various issues relevant to game development pipelines for integrating tessellation.

Ignacio Castano of NVIDIA will also discuss using the Direct3D 11 pipeline to tessellate displacement mapped subdivision surfaces, as well as various issues related to water-tight approximation of surfaces.